


How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth

by MlleMusketeer



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Canon Rewrite, Character Death, Elective Family, Genocide, Infanticide, M/M, Major Canon reinterpretations, Medical Experimentation, Mentorship, Murder, Prime/Lord Protector relationships, Religious Fanatics, Slavery, Spark Sex, Sparklings, Torture, Ugly Societal Expectations, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, if it's horrible someone's done it, let's hope I got it all
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 35,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MlleMusketeer/pseuds/MlleMusketeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AoE rewrite. Now with 100% more horror and horribly screwed up robots. </p><p>Stranded on an alien planet, hunted by the species he sacrificed his own to protect, Optimus Prime finds that his survival--and that of the people he is divinely mandated to protect--depends solely on a teenage human girl. He may have absolute trust in her, but will she still trust him when the horrors he's committed in the name of both their species come to light? </p><p>Tessa Yeager needed a friend. The fact it came in the form of a giant metal threat to national security was a minor (okay, actually major) detail. But secrets don't last long, and all friends have their own baggage. With the government hot on their heels, her dad in danger, and a bounty-hunter-turned-religious-fanatic determined to capture them at any cost, Tessa's got some fast choices to make... and alliances to forge. Because the future of her planet may just rest, not in her hands, not in any Autobot's, but in Megatron's.</p><p>And Megatron has more than enough reason to hate them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I love the trailers for Age of Extinction and was sorely disappointed by the actual film. I wanted 100% more competent Tessa, for one thing, and for another, a number of headcanons about how horribly screwed up the Prime/Lord Protector dynamic could be had been bugging me for a long, long time. 
> 
> This fic is based solely on canon established in the movies. While I am familiar with some of the comics, for the large part (especially relating to Cybertronian society, the meaning of spark brothers, ect) I am taking considerable creative liberties (that is, throwing canon out the window).

The war ended the day Megatron surrendered. The Cybertronian War, the Great War, whatever you called it. The war ended, and the slaughter began. The war ended, and their extinction began, the day Megatron called for a truce… and the horror of that, of his role in it, dried Ratchet’s intake and woke him gasping in the middle of the night. 

Fifteen years ago, they’d sold the soul of their species to appease another. Fifteen years ago, Ratchet had watched Optimus do what the humans required, and realized he was a slave seeing the shackles on his wrists for the first time. _We’re not Cybertronians_ , he’d thought, _we’re their tools_. 

All their desperate tributes weren’t enough to save them. The humiliating days of sleeping in alt in the bright warehouse labeled _Health and Human Services_ —and wasn’t that ironic now!—seemed very pleasant now. Now he recharged where he could, fueled where he could, and never enough. 

Sometimes he didn’t know whether to blame Optimus or pity him. Oh, he’d tried to save them, he’d sacrificed himself to do it, frame and spark, over and over again, and his desperate cry to them to flee still echoed in Ratchet’s audials. He told himself that turning away from Optimus in that moment was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and on all but the very bad nights he could pretend it wasn’t a lie. On the very bad nights, he wondered if he could have changed any of it, if he had defected.

Now, he crouched in a corner of the old warehouse, optics dimmed to their lowest setting, and prayed that the headlights sweeping over his hiding place were stupid teenagers looking for a place to swim without their plating on. He knew he was wrong, but he had nowhere to go, and he’d prefer the last few moments of self-delusion to more unreasoning terror before he was captured and vivisected, thank you. 

Self-delusion lost about the same time they blew the doors open. Ratchet curled himself up into a ball and cowered. Heroics be damned. After what he’d done for Optimus, he could hardly be heroic, and unlike Decepticons, being heroic wouldn’t get him killed any faster or less painfully. 

He wanted to go home. He wanted to at least offline where the air smelled of clean metal, not with rank organic stink in his olfactory suite. He wanted to hear the wind over the Praxian Plains again, the Sonic Canyons sing. He wanted to hear another Cybertronian voice. He didn’t want to offline slowly, by inches, at alien hands; if Megatron had turned up at that instant, Ratchet would have thrown himself onto his claws gladly. Now, the horror of the imminent future swept up around him and he sobbed static into his hands, curling away from the lights. 

He’d lost everything. His faith in Optimus, Optimus himself, Bumblebee and the others, and he had no reason to resist—but now, at the end of all things, he was too tired for theatrics. He was sparkbroken, and he was terrified. He had no dignity to protect; the humans had taken that, as they’d taken everything else. 

There were snapped orders. Things he didn’t want to understand, wished he couldn’t understand. He clamped his hands over his audials and waited.

The back of the warehouse blasted open. Guns went off—and something walked in among them as if there was nothing in its way. His scanners noticed first. Cybertronian. He looked up in wild hope, and a smooth glass visor tilted down to look at him, green optics glowing behind it. 

He knew that mech. 

He was dead. 

But it was better than the humans. He forced himself upright, and a massive hand caught him around the shoulders. Another seized him under the chin, forcing him to look at those optics. 

“You are Optimus Prime’s medic,” he said. Cybertronian. Ratchet could have wept with relief. 

“Get on with it and kill me,” he said, in the same language. 

“No,” said Lockdown, and he was on the ground, knee in the back, hands wrenched behind him. The circuit-invading points of stasis cuffs stabbed past his wrist plating and into the sensitive lines beneath, energon trickling hot around them. A moment later, his ankles were given similar treatment. 

Lockdown lifted him, paused looking down at the shocked humans. “He is mine,” he said. “Optimus Prime is mine. Do what you will, but do not interfere with my bounty, or you die.”

He walked away, heedless of the bullets. Ratchet watched the ground go by and tried to calm his panting. 

He was probably going to die, but at least it wouldn’t be in human hands. 

The humans did little to stop Lockdown from taking off, but that meant his attention turned to Ratchet all the faster. He had barely hung in his cell long enough to get his bearings—and be faintly disgusted and impressed by the range of ugly implements that lined its walls—before Lockdown returned.

“Tell me about Optimus Prime,” he said, circling Ratchet. Ratchet just looked at him, then dropped his helm.

“He’s your next bounty, is he?” he managed after some time.

“Tell me about Optimus Prime,” said Lockdown again. 

“He’s dead,” said Ratchet flatly. “Has been for ten years.”

“No,” said Lockdown. Ratchet looked up at him again. 

“Tell me about Optimus Prime.”

Ratchet offlined his optics. 

He wondered then. He wondered if Optimus were still online, what did he owe Optimus? Optimus had asked such things of him. This was one more. Could he still give it? After all he had done, his loyalty was a sadly tattered rag indeed. He couldn’t claim to have honor, not since Africa. Optimus had done terrible things. Perhaps giving him to Lockdown would be justice.

Habit won. Ratchet looked up at Lockdown and managed to spit. “Go frag yourself.”

Lockdown nodded, considering. “We have time,” he said. “And the materials to hack you.”

“Go frag yourself,” said Ratchet more quietly, lowered his helm again, and offlined his optics. 

Nothing to do but wait. At least the ship smelled of other Cybertronians. At least he wasn’t alone among aliens.

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Damn miracle she made it this far.” Ben pulled at the bill of his baseball cap, peering at the old Peterbilt parked in the lot of his truck stop. “Poor old girl. Someone ain’t treated you right.”

“You treat one of those right, they run forever,” said the tow truck guy. New guy. Ben hadn’t learned his name yet. From Cali. Too expensive out there, he’d said, and too damn tired of popping the hood on things to find a computer blinking at him. Fucking rich hippies, had to have a computer in everything, and before you knew it, the fucking car was outthinking you. Not a place for a man with pride. “Treat ‘em bad, they’ll blow up in your fucking face. Still, gotta give her credit for trying.”

“Yeah, but rules are rules. Can’t have her cluttering up half the parking lot. I gotta make a living, and the summer crowd's about to come through."

“You got that right. I’m sure someone at the scrapyard will know what to do with her.”

“Betchya ten bucks that it’s gonna be Yeager.”

“Yeager?”

“Cade Yeager. Lives over thataway, got a teenage kid, sweet on old cars like this. Junkier the better. Betchya ten bucks Yeager’ll have you towing this one to his place in under a week.”

“Make it two drinks and you’re on.”

“Two drinks it is.”

 

* * *

 

Two days later, Ben got a call. Tow truck guy--couldn’t stop thinking of him as tow truck guy, probably because his real name started with a T, Tommy--sheepish. “I owe you two beers.”

“Toldya,” said Ben. 

“I almost didn’t,” Tommy said. Ben could hear him scratching his head over the phone. “Boss wanted it flat, said it wouldn’t even do for parts. Took up too much space. What’s-his-face--”

“Yeager,” said Ben. Tommy, he was learning, didn’t do names. 

“Yeager showed up ten minutes before, bought it, and I towed it over two hours ago. I owe you two beers. Hey, did you know his kid wants to be a goddang engineer?”

“Not a word about Tessa. She’s a smart cookie.”

“Not a word, got it,” said Tommy. “Just, you don’t get a lady that smart and--”

“She’s a sweet kid and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Tommy shut up, probably figuring (correctly) that the beer was in jeopardy.

 

* * *

 

It was a fat envelope. 

Tessa put the rest of the mail on the ground and ripped it open with a thumb, not caring about neatness, fumbled the packet of paper out. 

_Congratulations! You have been admitted…_

Her eye skipped over the page, then to the middle paragraph. 

_Due to the unusual number of highly qualified applicants, we regret that we cannot offer you a scholarship at this time. However, we do have many funding opportunities for our students…_

By which they meant, _take out a loan, be happy for four years, then get totally screwed as soon as you’re trying to get a job._

It wasn't totally impossible. She did have that savings account and that might cover just enough, with the tiny fellowship she _had_ managed to get…

She huffed a sigh, stuffed it back in the envelope, and trudged back up to the house, where Dad was conducting what appeared to be a three-ring circus. One of his deliveries had just come in. 

Dad looked like a kid at Christmas. 

Tessa watched him hovering around the tow truck, giving the poor driver way too much advice, and generally acting as if the rusty truck were made of glass. She tucked the admissions envelope between two catalogues. She needed to make this decision alone, because if Dad knew she’d gotten in, he’d insist she go, even if they really couldn’t afford it. 

One rustbucket old truck wasn’t going to make the difference, and if he got too excited, Dad would convince himself it would, and then they’d _really_ be in trouble. It was tight, but not super tight. Not foreclosure tight. Dad was careful about that at least.

Poor tow-truck guy was looking seriously harried. Dad must have been really getting on his case. Dad never actually _meant_ to be a pain. It just sort of happened. He’d get totally into something and focused on some small detail and next thing you knew you wanted to smack him. She’d better derail him.“Dad,” she called, “you can’t keep spending money on junk.”

He turned. Definitely derailed. “I can break it down, strip it for parts,” he said, grinned. “This is what’s gonna put you through college!”

Tessa looked up at the truck, and privately thought she’d better aim for that scholarship. She didn’t say it out loud. There was derailing Dad, and there was just being cruel. “Need any help?”

“College, huh?” said the tow-truck guy, hooking an arm out his window. “What for?”

“Engineering, I hope,” she said. “Haven’t decided what field yet.”

“Wow,” said the tow-truck guy, with such genuine amazement that Tessa decided he deserved all the pestering Dad could dish out. She smiled politely, though it made her face hurt, and headed in, knuckles white on the packet of mail. 

 

* * *

 

Somewhere between finishing Physics and procrastinating more on English, Tessa pushed the screen door open and went down the steps so she could burrow her bare feet into the grass and look up at the stars. 

_Admitted._ “I did it,” she said aloud. She’d checked her account, the one that Dad refused to touch, because the money she’d earned last summer working at the mechanic’s was all hers. It wasn’t a whole lot, not enough for an entire year of college, even at a state school, but enough to make it doable with the one fellowship she’d managed to get. She could reapply for another scholarship next year. 

Her heart beat fast. Finally! Having people to talk to about school who were interested in the science! Having a school that would back off and let her do what she was interested in, not take up time with PE and Life Skills and all those various useless things! Meeting people like her who weren’t teachers! She laughed aloud with the excitement. She could do it. After so long, she could do it, get a proper background, make new things, four years from now have a decent job where they didn’t feel the pinch of the bank at their backs all the time. 

Maybe she’d find people who wouldn’t look at her funny if she started talking about what she was _really_ interested in.

She’d grown up on Star Trek. Mostly anything that was on when mom wasn’t around. She’d watched it, and decided she wanted to be like Jadzia Dax, and later on when she finally saw _Voyager_ , B’Elanna Torres. She wanted to be the person to fix things in a universe full of strange wonderful people from wildly different species. 

When she was ten, she started getting a better idea of what people meant when they said _Chicago_ , and why it wasn’t a good idea to go on about alien species that they could meet, and the bright future of space travel. By the time she was thirteen, she’d learned it wasn’t the best idea to even disclose that she wanted to work for NASA. She’d just say “I want to be an engineer,” and smile at the condescending praise this would provoke. 

Now, at seventeen, she felt a peculiar sort of resentment at every _Transformers are Dangerous_ poster she passed. Sure, they were, but those signs were the reason she had to stay quiet, the reason no one seemed to have any idealism. 

Sometimes it felt like there wasn’t _room_ for someone who could look up at the stars and see beauty there. Sometimes it felt like she was just stupid and idealistic, but she’d already gone so far down this path she couldn’t turn around. 

But they were beautiful. She wiggled her feet in the grass and sighed. Transformers hadn’t done a thing to stop global warming, or over population, or famine. They’d just been something new and exciting to fight about, and in the meantime, Earth was getting smaller by the second. Humans needed to figure something out, and fast, or they’d be in just as much trouble. Maybe they’d turn up on someone else’s planet with their own wars. 

Transformers were a thing from her parents’ generation, a result of their mistakes. Not hers. The existence of giant alien assholes didn’t change the fact that humanity had a problem. 

And now, she might have the chance to fix it.

Dependent upon her grades, of course.

She went back in and got the English textbook and a headlamp, then wandered out into the yard and sat on the steps. There was a full moon coming up over the horizon, bright and golden, almost enough to read by. Almost. She clicked the light on and started the struggle through the assigned reading, using a bit of scratch paper under each line so her eye wouldn’t skip around.

In the barn, something groaned. 

Tessa froze, the breath catching in her throat. _Probably something settling,_ she told herself, but it hadn’t sounded right. 

She stared at the barn, invisible outside of the small circle of blue-white light the headlamp cast, and focused on breathing again. The sound of her own heart seemed very, very loud.

The crickets were silent. It hadn’t been her imagination. 

Very, very slowly, she reached up to the headlamp and turned it off. And sat. 

One breath.

Two. 

She got to ten before the crickets started again, the chirring enthusiastic chorus of early summer. Somewhere, a toad chirped, a distinctive high note. She reached over for her shoes, groping in the darkness, and knocked them against the porch a few times to get whatever nasty things might have crawled into them out. 

Silence again, as she slid them on, and sat, very still, textbook still on her lap. 

In the barn, light flickered. She drew in a sharp breath. 

There was the noise again, a sharp groan. Tessa stood up and forced herself to walk to the barn, textbook in hand. Halfway there, she realized she should have called Dad; three quarters of the way she was wishing for the shotgun Dad insisted on keeping around, even though she was pretty sure his conscience would never let him shoot anyone. She hoisted _Journeys in Literature_ up onto one shoulder, like a weapon, and touched the latch for the barn, staying very quiet, hoping her shadow didn’t show through the cracks. One breath, two, and she jerked the door open. 

In time to see the new truck settle back on its shocks, with all the deliberation of a woman arranging her skirts to sit, and roll back a very little bit. Light flickered through its grille, and she had the feeling she was being very carefully examined. 

“You moved,” she quavered. It sat there. 

“I saw you _move_ ,” she hissed at it, angry. 

Nothing from the truck. She took a careful step in, leaving the door open. 

And gasped as something in the dark clattered over and crashed to the floor and something ran and thumped against her legs. She raised the textbook, looked down, and saw Buster, the fat old matron of the stray cats that had adopted the farm, blink beguiling eyes up at her. 

Buster _meeped_ in her best kitten voice, obviously begging. 

If Buster was in here, there couldn’t be anything that exciting; she’d survived to be this fat and old by fleeing anything strange or unusual. Tessa lowered the book. “You scared the fuck out of me,” she said. She looked back at the truck, then at Buster. “Are you sure that’s all right?”

Buster meeped again. Obviously, the truck was less important than food.

Tessa skitched her behind the ears and moved forward to the truck. It was an even worse wreck up close. Were those bullet holes?

She tugged at a door out of curiosity, and startled back when it came open under her hand. Things clattered out onto the floor, bouncing as they did. She turned the headlamp back on to look at them. “Wow. You got in trouble,” she said. Sure, some guys liked to go take old junk out to the range to shoot it up, but she was pretty sure that a semi was pretty expensive old junk to shoot up…and no one in town had a gun big enough to shoot those.

Suspicion curled in her gut. On impulse, she heaved herself up into the cabin, making a face as her butt made contact with the age old upholstery. The pedals seemed miles away, but her attention was on the steering wheel. There was something there, like a company logo, but wrong. She wiped the dust with a hand, coughed, and went very, very still when she saw what it was. 

Either someone had the most egregiously bad taste ever or…

“You _did_ move,” she said. “You’re a Transformer, aren’t you.”

The seat under her shuddered, and she scrambled out, fast. The flickering sped up, the truck seemed to have drawn in on itself, and trembled minutely. 

They stared at each other. Or, at least, she stared at the truck, and the truck somehow managed to convey wariness at her. 

“I could blow your cover,” she said. “Why aren’t you doing more? Shouldn’t you be able to transform and kill me?” 

The truck flicked its lights. She flinched. But there were no engine noises, just silence and the soft sound of metal moving on metal. It didn’t transform. It didn’t attack her. It just sat there, leaning away from her. 

“Unless you can’t.” She looked down at the shells around her feet. “You’re hurt, aren’t you? You can’t go anywhere, you’re alone…and you’re hurt.” _And scared_ , she thought, but that sort of observation didn’t go down well with anyone, especially big trucks. 

Her mind raced. The reward would make them rich. Like, never worry about tuition ever again rich. Or the mortgage. Air conditioning in the summer without worrying about the bill. 

But the truck hadn’t hurt her. It was helpless. It was staring at her with big beguiling terrified headlights, though she was probably guilty of anthropomorphizing there, those probably weren’t even its eyes, and just turning it in was wrong. She didn’t do that to any of the stray cats that showed up, and at least the county shelter made a good faith effort to adopt out its denizens before putting them down. Turning a frightened injured creature over to people who would kill it went dead against every bone in her body. 

Besides, she thought, with an edge of hysterical humor, it wasn’t the Starfleet thing to do. 

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m going to ask questions, you’ll respond with one flash for yes, two for no, all right?”

One flash. At least Dad’s bedroom was on the other side of the house.

“Okay. Are you in pain?”

There was a very long pause. Then one flash.

“Can the repairs you need be done by a human?”

One flash. 

She hesitated. It was a bad idea. She didn’t know if this was one of the bad Transformers, after all. It might attack them, if she actually fixed it…but it was alone and helpless and scared. 

“Okay,” she said out loud. “I’m going to take a look at you. Is that okay?”

Pause. Then one flash. 

“Okay,” she said again. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

She’d fixed trucks before, or at least helped. She went through the motions and tried not to think about how this one was watching her. “Tell me if I do anything that hurts, okay?”

She went to work. She wished she knew a way to anesthetize him because those welds had to hurt, but he didn’t flash his lights to get her to stop, so he had to think it was so important that he was willing to muscle through. He couldn’t communicate more than that, and so there was no asking him what sort of thing she might be able to do to numb the pain, if Transformers _had_ anything for that. He groaned a few times, and she asked him if he needed her to stop but he always flashed _no._ In any case, it had to be done. She worked as fast as she could, tried not to think of the human equivalent, and said sorry a lot. 

“There,” she said after what seemed like forever. “There’s not much more I can do. Do you think the rest can wait for tomorrow?”

One flash.

“Is there anything I can do, right now, for the pain?”

Two flashes.

“Will you have anyone come looking for you?”

Two flashes. 

“It’s okay, we’ll take care of you. My dad’s a mechanic, he can fix you up way better. I’ll talk to him, okay? I can come back in the morning. I can’t do much more on my own.” She felt terrible saying it, but it was true. There was still a lot of damage she hadn’t worked on, but she shuddered to think what further injuries her inexperience might inflict.

One flash.

Tessa bent and picked up her English book, smudging god-knew-what all over the cover. “I have homework,” she explained. “It’s English. Reading. I hate it.”

The truck was still. 

“Are…do you want company?” she asked, feeling really stupid the second it was out of her mouth. Why would it want company? It was a murderous alien robot. Which she’d fixed. 

There was no response for so long she started to repeat herself. Then the truck’s headlights flashed once. 

“Okay then,” she said. Like the night could get any weirder. She hoisted herself up onto the edge of the workbench and opened the textbook. “I’m sorry. I’m not good at reading,” she said, not entirely sure why she was doing this. She looked down at the page and drew a deep breath, glanced at the truck.

“It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

 

After a while, he went quiet and still. She wondered if he were dead, knelt to check, but the flicker of light through his grille was still there, and she supposed he was sleeping. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Text from Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Coleridge, (1834), http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173253


	3. Chapter 3

The sound of Dad rummaging around in the kitchen woke Tessa. What flung her out of bed onto the floor wasn’t the usual certainty of burned bacon, but the truck. Namely, the horrible mental image of Dad getting up early to get a head start on dismantling the poor thing.

She clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen, with a quick glance at the barn as she came in to make sure the truck hadn’t wrecked it or anything. “Hey Dad.”

“Mornin’ kiddo,” he said, poking the bacon like it was going to bite. “Gonna take a look at the truck.”

“Cool, cool,” said Tessa. “Can I have a go at fixing it up? Or can we do it together, like we used to? I kinda miss that.” She did, but it wasn’t the primary reason, and the duplicity made her stomach flop. “I took a look at it last night. It actually doesn’t look so bad. Could we sell it for more if we kept it in one piece?”

He looked up at her, startled and delighted. “Really? You’ve got time for that? I thought college—”

“They like to see extracurricular activities,” she said. “Can you take a look at it? Make sure we can do it? I dunno if I’m right…” No mention of money, which wasn’t unusual—and probably implied he hadn’t been expecting all that much from it in the first place. She felt like a slightly less terrible human being.

“Yeah, yeah sure.” Oh god, he was still grinning. Emphasis on the _slightly_ less terrible. Guilt settled hard in her gut. Dad was a dork. Dad was a dork, and here she was manipulating him into fixing a menace to national security. Or planetary. She wondered briefly if they threw you in jail longer for that. “Old trucks like that can sell for a pretty good price. Not great, but…”

“I can always reapply for a job at the shop,” she said. “I woulda made the call last night but your judgement’s better.”

“Sweetie, don’t let anyone tell you his judgement’s better than yours. We’ll check it out together after school, okay? See how you do.”

“All right,” she said, thinking of the poor Transformer waiting, probably still in pain. “But don’t wait for me. Seriously.”

He grinned again. “Fine. I’ll look at it after you leave.” His grin dropped as the breeze from the open window blew a waft of smoke into his face, looked down fast. “Aw, shit, the bacon!”

“I will be _right_ back,” she said, and ran upstairs to change.

 

* * *

 

 

The bacon was salvageable, she remembered the readings well enough to actually answer questions in class (she stammered badly, though, and people laughed at her, like always), and she managed to weasel out of math early by getting the work done fast enough. That was her last class of the day, and she drove home listening to the radio (lots of oldies, no one in the car to make fun of her, she turned it up and sang along like she really meant it, made herself laugh). 

She hopped out of the car, left her backpack there, and ran up the driveway to the barn. “How’s it going?” 

“Hi honey, welcome home,” he said, mostly under the truck. “How was school?”

“Great. How’s the truck?”

“Better than she looks. Did you _see_ the shells?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess she was used in some kind of training. Damn waste. Fucking hell, perfectly good bit of machinery, and they just shoot it up. You don’t _do_ that.” 

Tessa got down and scooted under next to him. “Wow, she is in good condition. Some of this looks…really new.”

“Yeah. So, what do you see needs fixing?”

Tessa grinned, and started pointing. 

 

* * *

 

At least it was Friday. She took a long hot shower to get all the grease off, trying not to think about how it was someone’s bodily fluids, and thought about the weekend instead. There were strawberries in the fridge that needed using up, and the Bisquick was still just fine, so strawberry shortcake could happen if she got up early and picked up whipped cream. It might help with some of the guilt, though if everything went right she’d get the truck out and on its way without Dad any the wiser to what exactly was living in the barn. 

It wasn’t like the government knew there was a great big alien there yet, right? They’d never have let him get out of the scrapyard otherwise. Or to the truckstop. 

She saved dinner from Dad—he was trying to burn it again—tucked her feet up on the couch and looked at the old TV and the DVD player. They’d had it all her life—Dad liked it, and they’d never been able to afford one of the new wireless movie databases. They were getting more affordable, but as long as the DVD player worked, there wasn’t really a point. “Dad, what do you wanna watch?”

“You pick,” he said, still in the kitchen. “I’m up for anything.”

Tessa took a mouthful of spaghetti and frowned at the DVDs. One caught her eye. She grinned. It was too good to pass up. 

Dad, beer in hand, came out into the living room and looked at the screen. “ _Lilo and Stitch?_ I thought you were too old for Disney.”

“No one is _ever_ too old for Disney,” Tessa told him, and hit play.

The movie did kind of help settle her mind—after all, accidentally adopting a tiny furry living weapon from a dog shelter and accidentally bringing a big metal living weapon home from the scrap yard weren’t _that_ different—but did bring up new issues. Like the Captain Jumbas of the world. Or, for that matter, the Cobra Bubbles. She didn’t want to be around when either turned up, and she definitely didn’t want them to turn up at the house. She _liked_ her house in one piece. No VW Bugs thrown through it, thanks!

Maybe she should just come clean.

The thing was, getting the actual words, “Hey, Dad, that truck’s a Transformer,” out of her mouth proved to be more difficult than deciding she ought to tell him. She settled on, “Hey, Dad, what do you know about Transformers?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t see much of them. I was too busy down here, with the shop and you. You were the crawling into everything and sticking everything in your mouth stage. Did you know I caught you with—”

She eyeballed him. “Dad, really.”

“I’ve never read the news much, sweetie. Or watched it. There wasn’t a lot I could do about it, and it upset your mom. Sure, I was interested, who wouldn’t be, but…it was far away, and it wasn’t like the military was going to call in a two-bit inventor to help with aliens.”

Tessa drew a breath to say, “It’s your lucky day,” but he drained his beer and got up. 

“I’ll take care of the dishes. Here, gimme that.” He made a grabby motion at her plate. “Go run off and frolic in the field or something.”

“I’m too old for that!” she protested, and his grin went evil. 

“But not for Disney?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t tear up,” she said, and flounced off to her room.

He went to bed soon after that; Tessa waited until she was _sure_ he was asleep, then snuck out to the barn. 

“Hey,” she said, pushing the door open. “You doing all right?”

The truck flashed its lights once. 

“Is the pain any better?” 

One flash.

“There’s not much to do. Way less than we thought. You heal yourself, don’t you.”

No response.

“We’ll keep working on you, promise,” said Tessa. “The next bit’s tricky, and I’ll need Dad’s help. I’d try and fix you faster but it might get him suspicious.”

One flash, and a rumble that sort of sounded friendly. 

“I have more English,” said Tessa, holding the book up. She wasn’t sure if the truck could see, per se, but it was worth a try. “Do you want some company? I can keep reading to you.”

One flash. Tessa scooted up on the workbench, looked across at the bulk of the truck. “This weekend, we’re supposed to start Macbeth. I’m not sure how well one person can read a play out loud, but I’ll try…”

 

* * *

 

 

It took longer than the weekend. But no guys in black trucks with guns showed up, so they were probably good. Maybe no one knew about this one getting out. Maybe this was one of the no-name Transformers, not the sort anyone put on a wanted poster. 

After the first few days, the truck started shrugging one of its doors open, a silent invitation to sit in the cabin. Tessa felt kinda weird about that, something not helped by the myriad of fleabites she got the first evening. The next morning, she brought the fleaspray in and drenched the upholstery with it. 

“You’ve been letting the cats sleep in you, haven’t you,” she said. The radio crackled. _“Yes,”_ the truck responded, weirdly drawn out, a clip from a song she wasn’t familiar with. She’d jumped a mile the first time it had done that, but was more used to it now.

“That’s really kind of sweet,” she told it. “Okay, keep your doors and windows closed for as long as you can stand it, then open them so it can air out. You should stop having things crawling around in there after that.” At least with the cats hanging around in there, there wouldn’t be any mice. “I get to go flea the cats. They’re going to be _really_ upset.”

There were only five cats around the property at that point, but wielding the little tubes of flea goop, it seemed like more. Dad, complaining just as much as the cats, held while Tessa applied, and they tried to separate the cats so they wouldn’t lick the gunk off each other’s heads. Tessa wondered what the truck thought of the yowling and swearing and hisses, both from them and the cats. 

That night, sitting on the passenger side with her legs stretched out along the length of the seat and her head out the window to try and escape the everywhere scent of flea spray, Tessa paused in reading as the truck’s radio came on. It wasn’t like before, when it was trying to talk to her; this time it seemed to be rambling, concerned and upset. Tessa listened. 

She couldn’t really tell what the truck was getting at. Just that it was bad, and after a little while, when she put a hand on its wheel and there was no response, she concluded it was sleep talking. She stopped with the Macbeth, and flipped back in the English book to something happier (no mean feat in literature), and read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 

It seemed to help. The next day found her in the school library, looking for funny things Shakespeare had written, and more translations by W. S. Merwin. The librarian took pity and sent her home with _The Lord of the Rings_ as well as _Much Ado About Nothing_. Tessa, who’d never thought she’d read the actual books (the movies were long enough), looked at them, gulped, and scuttled out of the library. It wasn’t like she particularly liked reading any better, but something about the truck made the lump in her throat, the certainty of failure, go away. And more practice had to be good.

They helped too. 

And as stupid as it was, she was going to miss the truck when it left.


	4. Chapter 4

Tessa brought home her first B on an English exam since elementary school. Cade grinned and made much of her, and quietly hung it on the fridge that night. Her startled, “ _Daaaaad_!” made it completely worth it.

He took a little extra time to make sure they’d be ready to start up the truck when she got home. The second he heard the wheels of the Jeep on the driveway, he bolted for the barn and got everything ready. Gas in the tank, everything. Maybe he could teach her how to drive an unsynchronized transmission before they sold it… 

She pushed open the door looking confused and nervous, backpack slung over one shoulder. He grinned at her.

“She’s all ready to go, sweetie,” he said. “We did great.”

He touched the jumper cables to the new battery, and almost fell over as pandemonium ensued.

The truck shuddered, a wrenching sound of metal in pain. Static, garbled radio and a screech of feedback. The entire thing bucked, came apart at the seams. Cade sat flat on his ass and _stared_. “Oh fuck,” he said, very quietly.

It was a Transformer. 

In his workshop. 

He’d rebuilt a _Transformer_ with his daughter. 

_Fuck._ Katie had said he’d be a terrible father during the custody hearing, but even she wouldn’t have seen this one coming. It was so bad he almost laughed, but there was a fucking _Transformer_ in his workshop and that sort of thing tended to stop laughter dead.

The thing crouching in the center of the garage didn’t look like the propaganda posters. Blue glowing eyes looked down at them, frightened, darted to the door. He had only a brief impression, because the Transformer drew in a sharp breath and scrambled backward, ran hard up against the wall and flinched from it. Then stopped, staring at them, holding itself very still. 

There was a long pause.

“Please move away from the exit, so I do not have to cause structural damage as I leave,” it said. He, realized Cade, probably a he, from the voice, over the terror. He drew a breath to tell Tessa to run, to call for help, but Tessa stepped right into the thing’s path. 

“Wait,” she said. Cade lurched forward, moving too slowly—it would squash her, it would squash her before he could get there.

But it didn’t. It just looked down at her as she stood there with her hands raised, talking like she was calming a cat. “Wait. They might find you. They’re always talking about energon detectors and stuff in the PSAs, right? Are you going to be able to get anywhere before they catch you?”

He found his voice. “Tessa Marie Yeager, what the _hell_ —”

“Dad, not now,” said Tessa, still watching the Transformer. “Just let me handle this, okay?”

The Transformer had gone very still, watching her like he expected her to hurt him, his eyes darting to Cade, then back. But he wasn’t squashing anyone.

“What reason have you to protect me?” he asked after a long while. 

“You’re hurt and scared and alone,” she said. “If you were going to hurt us, you would have just busted out of the barn. You could have killed me at least six times this week, especially when I flea-sprayed you! And you didn’t. Even when you were hurt and scared and alone.”

The Transformer was silent a long time.

“What’s your name?” asked Tessa, quiet and gentle, her hands in view and open. His eyes flickered as he watched her. 

“Orion,” he said after a while. “Just Orion.”

“I’m Tessa. Just settle down, we’re not gonna hurt you. You’re safe in here.”

“Tessa what the hell are you doing?!” 

Tessa gave Cade an exasperated look, eyeroll and all. “The yelling guy who woke you up is my dad, Cade. He’s not good with surprises.”

“Tessa--”

“‘scuse me. Family talk. Dad, outside?”

He hesitated. She gave him her best _no really it’s okay_ look, and headed outside, turning her back on the thing like it was one of the cats. Cade backed out after her, waited until the door was closed before yelling.

“Tessa Marie Yeager, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You always told me to do what I thought was right,” she said. “I got a good look at that truck earlier, alright? And I saw enough weird stuff that I got pretty suspicious, and did some research--stop looking worried, Dad, I didn’t use the internet, just those old newspapers Mom left in the shed--and I got pretty sure that we had one of them in the barn and I got to thinking about what to do. And don’t worry, Dad, he’s one of the ones who fought on our side. He’s got the Autobot insignia on his wheel. They didn’t attack us.”

Cade pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tess, sweetie, you seem to have missed the part where that thing is a threat to national security and an enemy of the state.”

“But--”

“Look, it’s a sweet idea, but in no way, whatsoever, is it a good idea. This could get us both in prison, Tessa!”

Tessa squared her shoulders and glared up at him. “But it’s the right thing to do. You raised me to do the right thing, Dad.”

He couldn’t really deny that. He raised his hands. “Okay. Okay. So we do this your way. We just have a Transformer camping in the barn for how long? I need that space, Tessa!”

“One, he’s not a Transformer, he’s an Autobot. Two, not long. Because I think I know how I can make sure he can get away without being detected. It’s a Friday. I think I can get everything together over the weekend. He’ll be out of here by Monday. Promise.”

“Seriously?” He gave her a Look. She’d used the same argument about Buster. Buster had been with them for ten years.

“Promise.” She folded her arms. “You saw how scared he was.”

He gave her a long, doubtful look, wishing he could give her the same _well you’ve got to clean up after him and take care of him speech_ he had about Buster, but stray giant alien robots that were a threat to national security were a very different thing from stray mutts. He wished the biggest problem was whether or not he was going to crap on the lawn.

“Besides,” she said, “you don’t want to provoke him. He could cause a lot of damage if we made him angry at us.”

“He was willing to leave.”

Tessa rolled her eyes. “Dad, seriously, it’s way better to have him owing us a favor. You never know when it’ll come in useful.”

Cade raised his eyebrows. “Mind tellin’ me the truth, sweetie?”

She looked away and down. “I’ve been doing my homework in there at night. The radio comes on, like he’s sleep-talking or something. He’s alone and scared, Dad.”

“Your homework.” 

“English homework,” she said. “It’s nicer in there. Helps me calm down enough to focus. I started reading bits out loud. He stops sleep talking when I read, like it calms him down, too. He really likes Shakespeare. I’ve been trying to do the voices.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose again. “My daughter’s been reading Shakespeare to a menace to national security to get him to settle down and go to sleep at night.”

“Just give him a chance,” said Tessa. “Please, Daddy?”

“You only say that when you really want something.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. If we get arrested, it’s your fault.”

“Yeah, I know. Monday. I promise.” 

Cade looked at her, and sighed. Yup. Buster all over again. _I’m sorry, your honor. My daughter has a thing about stray cats…_

At least this one might have the sense to leave on its own. 

 

* * *

 

Tessa stepped back into the barn. “Hey, this an okay time?”

Orion nodded.

“Will you need anything?” she asked. “We can move stuff around so you can lie down. Do you need like, a pillow or anything?”

He looked down at her. Very, very slowly, he smiled. “I will not require a pillow, thank you, Tessa Marie Yeager. I am also adequately fueled; my systems are currently converting the gasoline your progenitor provided into a useable fuel.”

“Anything else?”

“No, Tessa Marie Yeager. I do not require anything else. Thank you for your kindness.”

“Want me to come back later with my reading?” she asked. “I need to study. The final’s next week.”

He looked concerned. “While I enjoy our reading sessions, I do not want to be responsible for you neglecting your other studies,” he said. 

Tessa laughed a little, wry. “The other classes are just fine. I’ve got Math in the bag, Physics, too, and the engineering club’s done for the year. I just suck at English.”

“Then I would be pleased to assist you in your studies, Tessa Marie Yeager.”

She couldn’t help the nervous giggle. “Just Tessa’s okay,” she said. “Dad only uses my entire name when he’s really mad at me.”

“I do not understand,” he said. As far as she could tell, he looked confused. “Why would using your full name be anything other than an honorific?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s a Dad thing.”

Orion made a little hum. “I will take that into consideration, Tessa.”

“And you’re really all better? We fixed everything?” She doubted it. There had been so much to deal with, and he’d been in such bad shape. Besides, they’d fixed him like a truck, not a Transformer. They had to have missed something.

“Do not be concerned, Tessa. I only need time.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

He leaned down over her to read over her shoulder and did all the voices and explained the various symbolisms better than her teacher could. He told her Cybertronian stories as they went to illustrate his points. He didn’t get mad at her when she made mistakes. Tessa left the barn late that night feeling like maybe, just maybe, she had a handle on this English thing. 

So she completely missed how worried Dad looked when she came back in. 


	5. Chapter 5

Dad had left yesterday’s mail on the table. Tessa ate breakfast, sorting through it with a hand, and froze when her fingertips encountered an envolope from the bank. Her heart froze. There in red were the two words she’d always hoped she’d never see on something addressed to them. 

_Foreclosure Notice._

“Oh no,” she whispered, and picked it up. Dad had said they were fine. Dad had said they could afford a new graduation dress for Monday. Dad had said the costs of things for the truck were fine. “Oh no.”

She headed out the door and over to where Dad was doing something unspeakable to the lawnmower. Her throat felt tight, and tears pricked her eyelids. She blinked them back, swallowed hard. “Daddy?” 

God she sounded like she was five or something. He looked up, concerned. 

“Yeah, pumpkin?” There was grease all over his face. She wanted to be angry at him. Wanted to yell, but he just looked like stupid doofy Dad, totally innocent of whatever had caused this. 

“I think you missed a payment?” she said in a small voice, and handed the envelope over. 

His face went very still. When he glanced up at her, he looked hunted. “Oh, that,” he said, and his voice was all wrong. “Yeah. I’m going down to the bank tomorrow to sort it out. It’ll be fine. Promise.” He tried a smile, which just looked worse. “You could come along and look for a dress?”

“Dad,” she said. “Dad, look at me.”

He did. Guilt was written all over his face.

“We don’t have the money, do we.”

“Sweetie…”

“Dad, tell me.”

He started messing with the lawnmower again, fumbling with the screwdriver, the head skipping out of the screw. Silence.

After a while, “No. We don’t. I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ll…I’ll do what I can, okay? I just don’t want you to worry.”

She looked down at the notice. Slowly ripped it open, watching his shoulders hunch as she did. Pulled it out and read it, and when she looked at him again he’d given up on unscrewing the screw and was wrenching at it with the screwdriver as a lever. 

“We haven’t had the money for a while,” she said. Not for four months. $3,500. She would have cursed, but her brain felt too stiff and frozen for the words to come to mind.

“I wanted you to…” he trailed off and shrugged helplessly, then banged on the lawnmower. “Dammit, open!”

Tessa stared at that final sum. The future rolled out in front of her, horrible and certain, the only way it could be. Without a word she turned around and walked back to the house.

Dad didn’t look at her. He was too busy swearing viciously at the lawnmower. 

She went to the computer, logged in to her bank account, and made the transfer. Five thousand bucks over the summer, and there went more than half. Which left the other issue.

She went to her admissions account. 

_Congratulations!_ blazed on the screen in front of her. She scrolled down fast, to the bottom. Clicked the _Decline_ button. 

_Reasons for declining our offer of admission?_ the computer asked. 

She typed _financial,_ logged out and cleared the browser history. She’d decline the fellowship in the morning, burn the letter once Dad was asleep. She was wiped for now. 

She went back out. “Get on the computer,” she said. “Make the payment.”

“What? Sweetie, where’d you get the money? You didn’t rob a bank or anything, did you?” 

She forced a smile and a lie. “Just something saved for a rainy day. It was enough. Go on, Dad.”

“Thanks sweetie,” he said. “You really saved our butts.” He hugged her as he went past. 

Tessa returned the hug, just enough he couldn’t tell anything was wrong. “Yeah,” she said. “Saved our butts.”

 

* * *

 

The leaden feeling was okay, at first. She told herself it wasn’t that bad. She could manage. It was just for one year, she could go back the next year and try again. Everything _wasn’t_ ruined. 

And then she would think about college, about what it could be, and it would come back, full-force and it hurt so much she didn’t know what to do with it. She kind of wanted to burst into tears, but every time she found some kind of privacy Dad would pop up, looking for something, and she couldn’t let him see her cry. 

Out of desperation, she wound up in the barn. Orion looked down at her in some surprise as she stumbled in. “Tessa, is everything all right?”

“It’s—it’s fine,” she said, and burst into tears. 

“Tessa?” said Orion, and there was a great sense of filled space as he leaned over her. She was more occupied with wiping her nose on her shirt so she could breathe—it wasn’t the pretty crying a lot of other girls seemed to be able to manage effortlessly, but sticky gooey gross sobbing, and she was going to start dripping in the next few moments. 

Something nudged her shoulder. She looked up to find that Orion had very carefully placed what was probably supposed to be a comforting hand on her shoulder, though he’d only managed part of a finger. “Tessa Marie Yeager, it will be all right. Tell me what the problem is, and I will do what I can to help.”

It just made her cry harder. The only way he could help would be by getting turned in. That wasn’t going to happen. But between sobs she told him anyway, because she _couldn’t_ stand keeping quiet about this, and there was no one else to tell. The finger on her shoulder stroked comfortingly. After a time he lifted it and came back with one of the slightly less grubby rags lying around. Tessa blew her nose on it. She was desperate. 

“It’s the one thing I wanted and I know it’s stupid to be so upset, I can reapply next year but I wanted it _so much_ and it’s not fair!” Her voice turned into a wail on the last part, and she flushed, feeling like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “I’m sorry. This has to sound so stupid to you. I shouldn’t—”

“It is entirely reasonable for you to be unhappy,” said Orion, scrounging around in the rag box with his free hand, probably trying to find something else reasonably clean. “To be denied your true function is a painful thing indeed.”

That sounded weird and alien but it was comforting and that was all Tessa wanted. She snuffled into the next proffered rag. “Thanks, I guess, for listening.”

“There is one possible solution,” said Orion. “I understand there is a substantial reward for information about any Cybertronian.”

She stared at him, all the pissed-off-ness she was trying so hard not to feel about Dad balling up in her chest and directing itself at the robot in front of her. “You’re _shitting me_ ,” she snarled. 

He didn’t seem to listen. “Indeed, I would find no reason for reproach even if you already had reported me. Your education—and by extension, the welfare of your family—is extremely important. Putting aside the welfare of your own immediate family for a stranger, one not of your world, is too much to ask any being, regardless of species.”

Tessa stared at him, the gooey rag bundled up in her hands, a long moment. Then the anger got the best of her and she hurled it at him. It bounced off his nose and splatted on the floorboards. “You fucking asshole!” 

He looked at her, calm and concerned.

“I did not fucking turn you in,” she said, clipping each word off. “What the _fuck_ do you think I am? Do you think that’s what humans _do?_ ”

He looked away. After a moment of silence he wiped at his nose with a hand. She should have felt bad for that, but somehow couldn’t.

“And I’m not _going_ to,” she added. “Holy fuck. Asshole. Do you think I did that just to get a fucking reward? That may be how shit is done on your planet, but not fucking here.” She stabbed a finger down at the floor. “Not in this house, not in this fucking barn. God. If I sold you out just to get to fucking _college_ I couldn’t fucking live with myself!”

“I see I have offended you.”

“No _shit_ , Sherlock!”

“I…have not had much reason of recent to trust members of your species.”

She looked at him for a while. 

“Yeah,” she said at last. “I guess not. I’m sorry. I’m just…I’m just really upset. I’m not gonna turn you in. Okay?”

“If you must, I would have no objection,” said Orion. “I am confident in my ability to escape, and you might get your reward. It would be an appropriate gesture of gratitude in exchange for saving my life.”

“Fuck off,” she said without much feeling.

“I would not be harmed.”

“I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.”

“But…”

“Don’t fucking tempt me!” she snapped. “Look, I know it would be easy! That’s why I can’t even think about it, all right?”

“I respect your choice,” he said at last. “I only wish I could do more.”

She snuffled and sat down. “I’ll manage.”

A few moments passed before she asked, “Can we change the subject?”

“Certainly.”

“…would you be willing to tell me about your planet?” She looked up at him. “What it was like before the war and stuff? I totally understand if not.” _I just need a distraction. I_ really _need a distraction._

For a moment she thought he would say no. But then he nodded, slowly, and began to speak.

She leaned her head back against the workbench, and lost herself in a different world, one of Primes and loyal Protectors, of the foul doings of Megatronus, the Fallen Prime, of worlds destroyed and saved. She felt selfish for it, but even the dreadful deeds in Orion’s stories seemed a relief next to her disappointment.

She wondered briefly if he might feel the same way about the things she’d been reading to him.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Graduation came way too fast. 

Tessa didn’t graduate with any special honors or anything, but Dad was just as proud of her as if she had. 

Orion also attended the graduation, both because he’d wanted to, and because the energon-masking system Tessa’d created needed testing. It was basically a shield around his tank, which reduced the amount of energon detectable from him to something approximating background levels. He later reported that he’d scooted up against the wall of the auditorium and listened to the vibrations, which implied he had spectacular hearing, and that somehow the sound guys hadn’t noticed that they’d somehow acquired an extra truck. 

They all ate dinner on the lawn that night. Dad had gotten steak, which was an expense he probably shouldn’t have made, and Orion settled down with a tank of gas, which was increasingly becoming a problem moneywise. Tessa hadn’t mentioned this to him yet. She had a really nasty feeling he’d do something insanely stupid if she did. 

She had a week before work started up. She’d felt like she needed to get to work immediately, but Mr. Burns, who ran the garage, insisted. “You just graduated, kiddo. Have some fun.”

Tess wasn’t sure how much fun could be had; she needed to keep busy or be terribly bored. But Dad seemed happy with it, and maybe she could help with some of his projects. 

Besides, there was Orion to bother. 

They’d taken to lying out under the stars at night, him telling her Cybertronian stories at such a rate that she thought he was trying to make up for all the Shakespeare. Recited stories seemed to mean more than printed ones, and as long as she had something to do with her hands, she could listen to him for hours. 

She wondered how he knew all these stories. Maybe all Cybertronians did. 

It was an uncomfortable thought. She’d spent so long thinking of Cybertronians as monsters, the things that came to get you if you were bad. It was hard not to. All the propaganda, all the footage of Chicago, seeped into everyone’s mind. All the _Star Trek_ in the world had an uphill battle against reality. _We have met the aliens and they are assholes…_

Orion wasn’t. Orion never talked about his involvement in the war, but Tessa supposed he must have been on the outskirts, maybe even a noncombatant (did they have those), definitely a historian. Hell, the cats cuddled with him. Hell, he was slowly repairing the fence, poking one post back into the ground at a time and handling the old barbed wire like it was yarn. He didn’t smile much, but if the rest of your species was dead, you wouldn’t have much to smile about. 

He also loved watching movies in the evenings with them. He’d sit outside and they’d open the windows so he could hear said movie as well as see it, and he seemed to really like _My Neighbor Totoro._ Anything else from Studio Ghibli, too, for that matter. 

He helped her build a small solar converter to supply fuel, which helped the gas situation, but didn’t fix it. He needed a _lot_ of fuel. But then again, anything that size would. 

Dad and Orion seemed to be getting on, though. They talked. Awkwardly. At least no one was trying to squash anyone else. That was a good sign. 

What wasn’t a good sign was the way the gas can gave under her fingers when she picked it up. They were supposed to be red, but this one was more pink, and downright white at the stress points. 

“Dad, I think we need new gascans…”

“I trust your judgement, sweetie. Cash is in the drawer.”

Tessa went and got the cash, and the expense book, and then on second thought reserved a few dollars for ice cream. It was a hot day. She’d just graduated. They needed something nice every so often.

She wrote it down in the expense book—she was the only one who did, really—and headed to the store. It was one of the new big box chains that’d shown up in the wake of Walmart’s bankruptcy in the late twenty-teens, big and soulless and with everything you could conceivably need. And one hell of a wilderness of a parking lot, baking gently in the summer heat. Tessa parked as close as she could to the door, half because of said heat, half because she always hated the tinny music coming over the parking lot speakers. 

She got a cart and headed in. 

It took way longer than she could have wished to find the gas cans, and by the time she did, she felt like removing the speakers from the ceiling with her teeth, if that was what it’d take to make them stop playing the godawful music. She gritted her teeth and held the gas can up to make sure she was getting the right thing.

“Hi. It’s Tessa, isn’t it?” said a voice off her left shoulder and Tessa stopped her contemplation of the various warnings embossed on the offensively red gas can and looked up. She didn’t recognize the woman, incredibly unflattering glasses, silvering blond hair in a ponytail, suitcoat over a black button down shirt, and a general air of really scary librarian. And six inch heels. Like they were nothing.

Suitcoat, heels. In the local Buy n’Large. Not good.

“Uh,” she said.

“Relax, I’m not from the government,” said the woman. “I’m a friend. Have a business card.”

The card she put in Tessa’s hand had an Autobot decal on it. 

“You could have gotten that anywhere,” Tessa said, taking a step back.

“I didn’t,” said the woman, and produced a phone. “I know what’s in your barn. Or rather who. He trusts me, but we’ll need help, and for that, I need you to do something for me.”

“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”

“Because it would be infinitely easier to send a team to your house to eliminate it and arrest you,” the woman said. “Take it.”

Tessa frowned at the phone, a little disposable prepaid thing with only one contact. She hesitated, then held out a hand. _What the hell, I definitely need help with this one!_

“Call that number,” said the woman. “Tell them, _the big guy needs help._ I’ll take care of the rest.” She dropped the phone in Tessa’s hand and turned to the freezer, rummaging for something, came up with a pint of salted caramel ice cream and a spoon. Smiled at Tessa. “I’m celebrating,” she said, and walked to the counter without a wobble. Tessa glanced at her heels again, and felt, on top of the adrenaline, envy. _Six inches and she’s fine!_

She tucked the phone in her purse, picked up the sort of ice cream Dad liked and put it in the cart next to the two new gas containers. She paused, looking at the ice creams, then went for another pint of the stuff Dad wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. _I just had the hell scared out of me by a weird professor lady with six inch heels, and I’m harboring a threat to national security. I’m allowed some goddamn green tea ice cream!_

The guy behind the counter was in her History class, a guy pushing six feet without the chest for it. He peered down at her. “Hey Tess. How’s it going?”

“Hey,” she responded, trying to sound polite and noncommittal. Now was not the time for flirting, and by the way he was going red under his zits, he was probably thinking about it. Oh man. “Uh, good. You?”

He fumbled through scanning all the things. “Uh. Hey, you doing anything Friday night?”

_Hopefully not getting arrested?_ “Gosh, I don’t know. My schedule is so crazy right now. Graduation and stuff, you know? See you at school!” She juggled all the things, somehow not dropping the ice cream, and staggered to her car, flopped in it and said, “Whew,” out loud. 

She looked at the phone. She wanted to make that call where she was safe…but wasn’t that what usually what got people in trouble in movies, GPS in the phone? This one looked shitty enough it might not have GPS, but no taking chances with Dad’s safety. She drove out of town several miles, pulled over and dialed. Took a deep breath; she always hated talking on the phone. 

_“Lennox residence_ ,” said this really gravely no-nonsense voice. She took another deep breath and said all in one go, “The big guy needs help.” 

_“Oh my god,”_ said that voice, one explosive breath. “Are you serious? Is he—what happened?”

“He’s okay,” she said. “Rusty, but okay. Look, I don’t know what else is safe. The person who gave me this number told me she’d take care of the rest.”

“Goddamn better,” said the voice. “Tell him we’re rolling.” 

He hung up. 

 

* * *

 

She’d forgotten to get gas. She left the phone in the shrubbery, and went back to town to do that, filling the gas cans as well, feeling really weird about how mundane it was, and slightly panicky about how melted the ice cream was getting. Then back out of town in the other direction to the house, and by the time she pulled up, the ice cream was definitely soup. She unloaded the gas, grabbed hers, made a face at the way the cardboard went squish between her fingers, popped the lid and resigned herself to drinking most of it. She tossed the other pint to Dad, who looked at it, then at her. “Sweetie, you have a mustache.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said and went back to slurping awkwardly with one hand while she hauled one of the gas cans into the barn. It was empty. “Where’s Orion?”

“Out back,” said Dad. She went back for the second can. “Sweetie, can I get you a _spoon_ or something?”

“I’m good,” said Tessa, muffled. She’d gotten to the solid stuff now, which was trickier.

“Seriously, I am getting you a spoon,” said Dad. 

“Like Orion’s gonna care. Means I don’t have to wash it.” She dragged the other can into the barn. Dad reappeared with a spoon, put it in her suddenly free hand. 

She sighed and put it in the ice cream. “Since when are you Mr. Civilization?”

“You have green all over your face,” he said, sounding nearly despairing. “Lemme get that for you.”

She held still while he did, surprisingly effectively. “Dad, you’re supposed to have the nostalgia when I actually go to college, not while I’m applying.”

“We have company,” he said. 

“What? And Orion isn’t—?”

“She’s talking to him. Go on.”

Suspicion grew. “Does she look like a freaky librarian?”

“Yeah, yeah she does. They want to talk to you.”

“All right then.” Tessa took another mouthful of ice cream, debated whether or not to leave the carton with Dad, then decided to take it. She walked around back of the barn into the old paddock. 

There was Orion sitting on the grass, his attention focused on the woman from the supermarket, who was happily eating _her_ ice cream. Tessa hurried up, feeling justified. “Hey,” she said.

The woman rose, wiped her palm off on her skirt, and walked over. Still in the damn heels. Tessa could really hate her for that. “Hi Tessa. Did you call?”

“Yeah and I dumped the phone.” 

“Good girl.” The woman’s handshake was firm, with the promise of more strength behind that. She smiled. “Sorry about all that. I’m Doctor Charlotte Mearing, Linguistics, Rice University.”

“And former director of National Intelligence,” said Orion.

“After the government, even academia seems relaxing,” said Mearing. “And don’t you ‘former’ me, mister, not from where you’re sitting. Pull up a patch of grass, Tessa. We need to talk. You’ve walked into something big.”

Tessa looked up at Orion. “Figured that out for myself, thanks.”

Mearing looked up at him as well. “Does she always talk back this much to her elders?”

Orion smiled a little. “Just as she should. She’s smarter than most of us.”

“High praise, when you haven’t even told her your real name.” 

“Can you guys stop bickering for like, ten seconds and tell me what’s actually going on?” Tessa dug out a spoonful of ice cream and put it in her mouth, raising her eyebrows at them. _Look, my mouth’s full, I’m not going to interrupt!_

They looked at each other. Things got awkward, for no reason Tessa could discern. 

Orion cracked first. “Professor Mearing is correct. I have not been entirely honest with you. My correct designation is Optimus Prime.”

Tessa opened her mouth, thought better about what she was going to say, and closed it again. Now she looked at him, she couldn’t imagine how she _hadn’t_ seen it. She’d seen his picture in newspaper, history textbooks, the warning posters. And she hadn’t realized. 

“I’m an idiot,” she said aloud. 

“Don’t blame yourself, he has a very honest face.” There was something nasty in how Mearing said it, and Tessa looked between the two of them again, confused. “In any case, I cannot congratulate you on your timing in waking him up enough, Tessa.”

“Actually, that was Dad.”

Mearing’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” 

“Yes,” snapped Tessa, and glared. Dad might be a little ditzy sometimes, but no way was someone else allowed to insult him. 

Mearing cleared her throat. “There’s a new Cybertronian threat on Earth.”

“I believe the government is equipped to deal with it,” said Optimus. 

“No, it’s not,” said Mearing. “It’s hardly equipped to deal with anything; believe me, I used to work for it. No, this time, we’re dealing with the issue ourselves, without the government interfering, without orders from on high…or trying to gain anyone’s trust.”

Optimus looked sharply down at her. 

She nodded.

He looked away again. “How do you know this?”

“Three weeks ago, Ratchet was stolen out from under the noses of a Cybertronian Elimination task force, by an unknown Cybertronian. An old friend got me the video.” She handed Optimus a tablet. He took it between two fingers and peered at it.

After a moment, his optics went wide. “Lockdown.”

“So you know him.”

“Yes,” said Optimus. “Yes, I do. What do you need me to do?”


	7. Chapter 7

Mearing smiled like a shark.

Something in Tessa’s stomach turned over. Something about that expression rang every single alarm bell her mind possessed. “Um. One second. Can I talk to Orion? I mean Optimus? Alone, I mean.”

Mearing didn’t like that, she could tell. “Tessa, now’s not the time. This is important.”

Optimus held up a hand. “Doctor Mearing, this, too, is important. I have already agreed to aid you. Do not concern yourself further.”

Mearing cast a doubtful look at both of them, picked herself up and headed back to the house. Tessa watched, worried. Hopefully Dad would know how to deal with her.

Optimus looked down at her. “What is your concern, Tessa?”

“Was she…are you really?” She swallowed. “Optimus, I mean? Not Orion?” She felt hurt. She felt stupid for feeling hurt. Why would he trust a human right off, anyway? But it didn’t help with the feeling hurt. 

“Yes.” He looked away from her, holding himself very still. “I am sorry for my duplicity.”

“I get it,” she said, because _It’s okay_ simply refused to come out of her mouth. 

“I have hurt your feelings.”

Tessa put the ice cream down in the grass and folded her arms around herself. “It’s stupid.”

He said nothing, just looked at her.

“So you were at Chicago,” she said. 

“I was.”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Neither, by the silence, could he. 

After a long, long time, she said, “So…is this goodbye? Do you go back with Mearing and save the world again or whatever? Get back to business as usual, defending the United States and the free world?”

A very long pause. Her heart sank.

Again, stupid. She hadn’t known him for all that long. He’d helped her with reading, sure, but it wasn’t like he was…

She looked up at him again, and the idea of saying goodbye made her want to burst into tears, because he was as close to a friend as she’d had in years. When the divorce happened, none of her friends had wanted anything to do with her, partly because she’d been a real brat to everyone out of sheer misery, and partly because their sympathy to her misfortune had faded as soon as they realized said misfortune wasn’t going to get dramatically better. 

He was a friend. 

He was big, and metal, and a threat to planetary security, and _still_ the only person she could talk to about things like Dad forgetting the mortgage, he helped her with the things she was bad at instead of trying to get her to do the things she was good at because he needed her help. 

She didn’t care who he was. 

He was _kind_ , that was what mattered.

“I hope not,” he said, and very carefully put one finger on her shoulder. “I do not want that life again. I do not want those…responsibilities.”

“If you have to, can I come with you?” 

She couldn’t believe she’d said it, but the reckless misery building in her chest since she’d rejected that college got in before she could think, and the moment after she’d shocked herself by _saying_ it, she shocked herself again by realizing she’d meant it. “Look, I’m not going to college. I might as well do something useful. They like extracurriculars.”

But he was already shaking his head, the beginning of a smile curling his mouth. “No. No, I will not put humans in danger if I can possibly prevent it. I have done that far too many times, and I will not risk the life of a friend.” He glanced at the house. “Not on Professor Mearing’s orders. Not again.”

“You two don’t like each other.”

“We have a history.”

Definitely shaky ground. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

Silence. Then, “I do not like the extent to which she has involved you. She could have made the phone call she required of you. It would have been simpler. She does not do things without a motive, and it worries me.”

Another long pause. “Tessa. If things go as badly as I fear they may, I must ask something of you.”

“Yeah?”

“If there is…an emergency I will need you to follow my instructions. Not Mearing’s, or your father’s. Will you be able to do that?”

It didn’t sit right with her. It didn’t seem right. Tessa sat and looked up at him. He looked back at her, steady and somehow trusting. 

Tessa didn’t like Mearing. Something about the older woman just didn’t seem right. And Dad was sweet, but didn’t keep his head in emergencies. Optimus? He probably knew what he was doing.

She forced herself to nod. “Yes. I can. You seem like the one who knows what he’s doing, after all.”

He smiled again. “I do not know what I am doing, but I do have some experience.”

“Some.” She snorted, folded her arms. “I should make sure the disaster kit is ready to go.” 

“A good idea,” said Optimus. 

“Will you have room for like, a three foot cube?” she asked. “Like, when you’re a truck?”

“I could put it in my subspace.”

“Okay, great. I’ll put it in the barn with you. If something happens…”

“I will take it with me. Yes.” He looked pleased. “A sensible precaution.”

“Thanks.” She looked down. “Do you think we’re going to be in that kind of trouble?”

A massive finger descended, touched her shoulder lightly. “I do not know,” he said. “I will do everything I may to keep you and your family safe. Your compassion does not deserve violence in return.”

He meant it. He said it as a simple statement of fact, and it was more reassuring than Dad saying,“Don’t worry, sweetie, nothing will happen.”

Bad things might happen, but if they did, Optimus would be there to help. 

The idea of not trusting him because he was a Transformer never crossed Tessa’s mind. She curled up with her back against his shin, and looked up at the sky. There was a really good thunderhead building up to the east. 

“Thank you,” she said.

He rumbled to himself. “There is no need.”

A longer pause, before Tessa grinned and pointed at the cloud. “So what does that look like to you?”

 

* * *

 

“I’ve hardly ever seen him like this,” said Mearing, watching Optimus and Tessa in the back paddock. “Sometimes, around the other Cybertronians. Not often, and usually only with Ironhide, or Bumblebee. What the hell did your kid do?”

“Tessa’s a good kid,” said Cade. “She’s smart, and she can’t stand bullies. She read Shakespeare to him, that’s all she told me.” 

“Shakespeare?”

Cade shrugged. “They were doing it in English. It’s not that weird; they’ve got those programs at the library where kids read to shelter dogs, right? And anything that helps her with it is good. Her grades are great in almost everything else.”

“Learning disability?”

“Haven’t been able to get her tested. She doesn’t want to, she says. She says she’s made it this far. Besides, money’s tight.”

“Interesting,” said Mearing, and looked back out the window. “Has she applied to colleges?”

“We’re waiting to hear back.”

“It’s late.”

Cade leveled a glare at her. “Tessa’s a good kid. She’ll get in.”

Mearing looked at him, a flat cut-the-bullshit look. He glared harder. 

“You’re worried,” she said. 

“She’s my daughter, why wouldn’t I be?”

Out in the back paddock, Optimus chuckled at something Tessa said. Mearing’s head whipped around. “Did he just laugh?”

“Yeah? What’s unusual about that?”

“I can count the number of times I’ve heard him laugh on the fingers of one hand, and I’ve known him longer than Tessa’s been _alive_ ,” said Mearing, still staring. “Your kid _did_ something.”

Cade shrugged, inwardly smug. “She’s a good kid.”

Tessa looked up at Optimus, head cocked, probably asking a question. Optimus leaned down to look at the grass, rumbled something. 

“I suppose,” said Mearing, very quietly, “that sometimes we all need to be reminded that we’re not monsters.”

_That_ made all the hair on the back of Cade’s neck go up. “What do you mean, monsters?”

“You don’t win a six-million-year war by being robot Jesus,” said Mearing. “Optimus tries to behave honorably, but he’s had to make…concessions.”

Cade thought about the implications of that, and his palms felt clammy. He glanced out at the back yard again, and Tessa suddenly seemed very small next to the foot she was leaning against. 

Until now, Optimus’s mass and attentiveness had seemed endearing, protective. Now, the massive form took on a sinister aspect. He wondered briefly at the number of lives that had ended at those hands, the hands Tessa happily climbed into to be lifted to the balcony. He wondered how the serene face would look twisted with hate, and he only just managed to stamp down the visceral urge to go pull his little girl away from the _thing_ looming over her.

Mearing was watching him. 

“Are you telling me he’s a danger to my little girl?” he managed at last, somehow even, somehow calm. 

“Oh, Optimus has always been fond of humans,” said Mearing, and he could just _hear_ the ‘but’ coming. He stared back at her, met her eye to eye, and the corners of her eyes crinkled very slightly. Amusement? Or the beginning of a scowl. “Unfortunately, yes, he is a danger to Tessa. Had you not considered, Mr. Yeager, that something like Optimus will have accumulated enemies?”

Cade darted a glance back at the pair in the yard. “What do you mean?”

“He has,” said Mearing. “Many enemies. Some more powerful than you can easily imagine. Believe me, I’ve seen them. And they want to hurt him, as badly and as long as they can. To them, Tessa’s not anyone’s daughter. Not your little girl. Not a promising engineer. Just a means to an end. The perfect revenge, happily going about without the slightest awareness ofdanger, ready for the taking by anyone bold enough.”

Cade’s hands closed into fists. His mouth dried. 

“So yes. Your little girl is in danger past _anything_ either of you can imagine.”

“But what can I do?” snapped Cade, with the helpless anger and fear boiling at the back of his throat. He checked out the window again. Tessa was laughing, head thrown back, face bright red, the huge belly-laugh she’d inherited from him. 

“I’ll take care of it,” said Mearing. “Don’t worry. Optimus will leave with me, this afternoon. You’ll never have to worry about him again.”

“How do I know they won’t come after Tessa anyway?”

“Move. Sell the house, get out while you can.”

He stared at her, expecting her to be joking, but she wasn’t. “Why the fuck should I trust you, lady?”

His language didn’t bother her one bit. She just smiled a tight little smile that made him hate her even more, and said, “Because, Mr. Yeager, you don’t have anyone else. I’ll go collect Optimus, shall I?”

 


	8. Chapter 8

“I will remain here,” said Optimus, calm and level. 

“You’re putting them in danger,” said Mearing.

“I will remain here. I have promised Tessa Yeager this. I have already put them in danger, and I shall remain to protect them from that danger.”

He and Mearing stared at each other. 

Mearing waited a few minutes, then nodded. “Very well, Optimus. If you are sure it’s for the best.”

“It is what seems best,” said Optimus. “Surety is the product of unwarranted assumptions, and I am no longer willing to use it to excuse great risks.”

Mearing looked at him and Tessa’s skin crawled. She really didn’t like that expression. 

“I have learned from my mistakes,” said Optimus, in what was likely intended to be a private rumble. “Have you, Charlotte Mearing?”

Mearing’s gaze flicked down, then back up. Her shoulders shifted, minutely more aggressive. “Was there a mistake to learn from? I did the best that I could.”

Optimus stared at her, then turned away, saying nothing.

Tessa looked from one to the other. This wasn’t about Optimus staying anymore, but something else, and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know what. 

“I’ll return on Monday,” said Mearing. “The rest of our team gave their ETA as early that morning. Then we’re going after Ratchet.” She looked challengingly up at Optimus’s turned back. “And what will you be planning to do with your human friends after that?”

“Leave them with a guard,” said Optimus. “At least until the present danger has abated.”

“A human guard? Great good that will do them,” said Mearing. “Lockdown will notice you’re here eventually. The longer you stay—”

“I will not leave Tessa unprotected.”

There was a sudden silence. 

“Tessa,” said Mearing. Her eyes narrowed. “Not the Yeagers, plural?”

Optimus looked over his shoulder. For a moment, he _did_ look dangerous, like the posters, and Tessa took an involuntary step back. 

“Professor Mearing, I sincerely hope you did not intend that the way it might be taken,” he said. 

“Not at all, Prime,” said Mearing. “But perhaps you want to reevaluate your priorities.”

Optimus looked at her a long moment more, then transformed, the back of his cab very pointedly aimed at Mearing.

Mearing’s eyebrows went up. “Very well.” She started down the drive back to her car, a pastel egg-shaped rental. “Tessa, a moment?”

Tessa glanced at Optimus’s turned back. She was reminded of the way Buster acted when she’d been scolded. 

She followed Mearing. 

“You need to be careful,” Mearing said. “Optimus has…the best of intentions, but his softheartedness will put you in more danger than anything else could. If anything goes wrong, call me. I’ll have people watching; if anyone turns up before they’re supposed to, I’ll warn you.” She paused with the door open. “And get your dad to teach you to use that shotgun he’s got in the hallway.”

She shut the door and the car hummed to life. Tessa watched it down the driveway, the whine of its electric engine fading into the noise of the cicadas, and folded her arms. 

“How do you know it’s not _my_ shotgun?” she said aloud. 

It made her feel a little better.

 

* * *

 

They grilled dinner on the porch that night. Dad liked to spend as much time as he could cooking outside in the summer, or pretty much anytime weather permitted. Or didn’t permit. There was an old photo kicking around the house of him grilling hamburgers on the porch of the townhouse he’d lived in right after college in a snowstorm, though that had been on a dare. 

Tessa had discovered that Dad would eat anything if you grilled it. Including vegetables. Dipping slabs of zucchini in Italian dressing and grilling them was pretty tasty, given that the object in question was zucchini, and Dad would eat it. 

Optimus had hunched himself up in truck mode all afternoon. After Dad had been clattering around on the porch for a while, he inched over until his windshields were level with the grill and sat there. Dad, focused on the chicken, didn’t notice until he looked up and jumped about a mile at the sight of the truck crouched next to the porch. 

Tessa watched all this from the kitchen and laughed, getting the hamburger buns down from the top shelf. They weren’t the best things with chicken, but with a bit of oil and grilling they’d be okay. She didn’t want to use up the corn or potatoes just yet. 

She mixed up some of the instant lemonade and headed out to the porch, where Dad was staring at the chicken instead of the truck. The truck, in turn, seemed to be staring at him. The awkwardness could be cut with a knife. 

Tessa went over to the railing. The truck sat there. 

Was he _sulking?_ It was half cute and half incredibly annoying. “Optimus, either move away from the porch or transform. You’re making Dad nervous.”

There was a pause. Then Optimus backed away and transformed, winding up on one knee, crouched so he wasn’t visible from the road. “My apologies, Tessa,” he said. 

“Are you all right? You’ve been acting weird.”

Optimus wouldn’t look at her. “There is nothing to be concerned about, Tessa.”

“Bullshit,” said Dad, turning a piece of chicken over. “You didn’t like what Professor Mearing had to say.”

“Professor Mearing—,” started Optimus, and stopped. “Professor Mearing has not in the past exhibited the best of judgement,” he said, somewhat more calm. 

“She says you have enemies,” said Dad, and slapped the first piece of chicken onto a plate as if it had done him some personal wrong. “Lots of them.”

“Yes,” said Optimus. 

“Enemies that might come after my little girl,” said Dad, and stepped around the grill to slap both hands down on the porch railing. “Is this true?”

The zucchini was burning. Tessa went to save it. 

Silence from Optimus. 

“ _Is it true?_ ” She’d never heard Dad that angry. Her hands shook on the tongs, and she nearly dropped the piece she held into the chicken bowl. 

“It is true,” said Optimus. 

“And you didn’t tell me this when you first arrived?” Dad’s voice went quiet. “That you, coming into _my_ house, were putting _my little girl_ in danger? She’s seventeen, okay? She’s a fucking kid. She’s got a _future_ , okay? She’s going to college, and you are _not_ going to ruin it by dragging her into your fucking war!”

Tessa did drop the next zucchini. It went splash. She looked down at it, half in the bowl of raw chicken juice and barbecue sauce, and felt like crying. 

Then the anger came up her throat and she slapped the tongs onto the picnic table and turned on Dad, who was still yelling at Optimus. “I don’t know how they do this on your planet but you do _not_ bring your fucking _war_ into people’s _houses!_ We saved _your fucking life. You should have TOLD us!”_

“Dad,” she said, and he didn’t hear her. 

“ _SHUT THE FUCK UP!”_

She clamped her mouth shut; she hadn’t meant for it to come out that loud, but it’d gotten their attention. Two pairs of wide eyes fixed on her, one brown, one glowing blue, and there was an identical expression of shock on both faces. “Just shut up. I didn’t get into college, okay Dad?”

“What?”

“I didn’t get into college.” The lie felt good. She wasn’t sure why. “I don’t have that kind of future. I’m sorry to let you down.”

“Sweetie—”

She put zucchini and an un-grilled bun on the plate with the one piece of chicken. “We’re in this together,” she said. “Optimus stayed to protect us. Don’t be a dick, Dad.” She grabbed her lemonade. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my room.”

* * *

 

 

Cade watched Tessa go, then looked back at Optimus. “This is all your fault.”

It was amazing how well a Cybertronian face managed to convey a _seriously?_ expression. They both looked after Tessa again. 

After a while Cade went awkwardly back to the grill. He rescued the zucchini Tessa had dropped and put it back over the flames to cook a bit longer. He took the chicken off. He took the rest of the zucchini off. He put the buns on. He took the buns off.

Optimus shifted his weight. “Perhaps we owe her an apology,” he said. 

“Oh, you are _not_ guilt-tripping me over this,” snapped Cade, stabbing the tongs at Optimus. 

“I said _we_ , did I not?” said Optimus, looking perplexed. 

Cade put the lid on the grill and frowned at him. He looked completely serious. Was he also feeling responsible?

“Fine,” he said, glanced up at the warm glow of light from Tessa’s window. “Fine.” He pulled off the frilly apron Tessa had made for him in middle school (he’d not had the heart to refuse it, and it’d grown on him. _That_ pink and _that_ green shouldn’t have gone together, but a few years worth of grease had fixed that) and headed inside. On the back lawn, metal shifted on metal as Optimus did likewise.

 

* * *

 

 

The un-grilled bun tasted terrible. Tessa groaned and poked at the chicken. Stupid Dad. Stupid robot. Stupid _Mearing_. Had she been dripping poison in Dad’s ears about the whole Optimus thing? She was willing to bet yes. 

She didn’t have an appitite. She chased the food around her plate with a fork. 

“Tessa?”

She looked up at her window to find it full of Optimus’s face and uttered a small scream, nearly falling out of her desk chair. 

“Are you all right?”

“You startled me,” she said. 

“I wished to apologize for my behavior,” he said, and was interrupted by a tap at the door and Dad’s voice. 

“Hey, Tessa? I wanted to say sorry…” 

Tessa went to the door and opened it, then looked from one to the other. “Is this like, a joint effort?”

An extremely sheepish look was traded across the room.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “I guess it’s better than the alternative.”

“We were both concerned about your welfare,” said Optimus. “I suppose this was a major contributing factor.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Dad. “Look, Tessa, Mearing told me some things that got me really worried—”

“Of course she did,” snapped Tessa. “Can’t you tell that woman’s pure poison?” She looked from one to the other. “Can’t _either_ of you? She wants Optimus on his own so he’ll do whatever she tells him to do!”

“I am not sure that is entirely accurate,” said Optimus. 

Tessa snorted. “Yeah, of course. Look, Dad, Optimus may be dangerous, but Mearing’s just as dangerous, if not worse! At least Optimus means well!” She took a deep breath. “Look, we’re going to have to talk this through. I’m pretty sure Mearing’s not the worst thing out there, and we’re going to be _dead_ if we can’t at least talk this through. If we can’t trust each other, we’re toast. Even Optimus leaving isn’t guarantee of us being safe, and it sounds like we’re not going to be able to sure we’re out of this even when he leaves.” Tessa folded her arms. “We have a lot to do.”

“Okay,” said Dad, raising his hands. “Okay. But can we do it over dinner? The flies are gonna get it if we don’t…”

“Fine,” said Tessa. “Optimus, you’re going to have to tell us what you think is going to come after us.”

It wasn’t the best dinner conversation but it was miles better than listening to them shout at each other. Dad seemed a little mollified Optimus hadn’t known Lockdown was coming after him when he first woke up, but not much. Not much, because Optimus described Lockdown and Tessa could have sworn Dad’s hair stood on end. Her own felt like it was doing the same.

And Optimus, as if he didn’t realize what he was saying, calmly described something that sounded like it was a comic book nightmare. A bounty hunter, fond of taking trophies and modifications from his victims, preferably while they were conscious. He had a cordial relationship with a number of alien species, allowing himself to be hired out to hunt their criminals as well, in return for steep payments, and some rumors claimed, instruction in a variety of interrogation techniques. 

He preferred the company of his own constructs, modified service droids (rumor again claimed that these were once sentient mecha who annoyed him) and technoorganic ‘hounds’, horrifying slavering beasts trained to capture, though in no way gently. He had a spark collection; this was substantiated, disembodied consciousnesses, the lucky ones suspended in unending nothingness. 

And the last report of him was that he’d vanished into the Quintesson Empire. Given the interests of the Quintessons, this was more than enough to make people nervous. There were rumors that he’d had dealings with them before; this was a logical conclusion, Optimus stated. His second in command, Jazz, had briefly infiltrated Lockdown’s ship. He’d been caught—remarkable in itself, given Jazz’s abilities—and in the process leaned Lockdown was a mech of some religious bent. Before Optimus and the Autobots had provided a princely sum to ransom poor Jazz back (Lockdown’s security procedures having stymied the Wreckers, the rest of Jazz’s spec ops force, and a number of other sneaky and usually—when applied to Decepticons—successful operations), Jazz had found that Lockdown was possessed of a determination to return Cybertron to its glory days… under the command of a species he called ‘The Creators’. The only species that matched this description were the Quintessons, whom some (unreliably ancient) legends claimed had attempted to enslave Cybertron in the distant past, before the Line of Primes had arisen. 

Jazz had flatly refused to have anything to do with Lockdown from there on out. _“Look,”_ he’d said, _“I got you a lot of information, all right? And I don’t think I’ll get any more than that and come back. Someone get me a stiff drink.”_

Dad went about the same color as the house—white running to gray. 

Tessa finished the zucchini and wiped her fingers on a napkin. She was glad Optimus was coming clean about Lockdown, but looking up at him made her doubt the threat was quite as fearsome. She’d seen the footage of him in battle. They were covered on the Cybertronian angle. 

What she was worried about was the human one. 

 

* * *

 

Sunday morning came too early, with her cell phone threatenign to buzz off the nightstand. Tessa groped for it, stabbed a finger on the accept button and _mmphed_ into the microphone.

_“Tessa? This is Charlotte Mearing. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”_

Tessa sat up. “Yeah?”

_“There’s a group of what looks like military vehicles headed your way. They’ll be there in twenty minutes. I’ll be able to bring help in about an hour. You’re going to need to stall them for that time. Keep them busy, don’t let them take you, don’t let them take Optimus.”_ Pause, while Tessa’s mind scrambled to take in what she’d said, and her stomach flopped hard. _“Can you do that? I hate to put you in this position.”_

“Yeah,” she said, her mouth dry. “Yeah,” because she had no choice. “I’ll do what I can.”

They were completely fucked. 

She hung up the phone and bolted from the room. “Dad! Optimus!”


	9. Chapter 9

Dad and Optimus alerted, Tessa bolted back for her room so she at least could face an eternity of jail fully dressed. Dad crashed around downstairs, and looking out the back window, Tessa saw Optimus dive into the dry wash, and out of sight, yanking the tarps they’d prepared over him, by the enormous noise of crackling plastic that erupted. Hopefully it would hide him long enough. Hopefully he’d grabbed the emergency kit. 

She looked up at the horizon, could see the cars coming even now. She gulped, the urge to run an almost physical force on the back of her neck. Hardly eighty degrees yet, but she was sweating like a pig. 

She wanted to get in the car and go. There was still time, they might make it out—but that was foolish. Running meant getting caught on the road, where Mearing and her team wouldn’t be able to get to them, where they were likely to get arrested first and questioned later. 

They still might be, but they stood a better chance here.

She hoped.

Tessa took a deep breath to steady herself and walked down the stairs. Dad was there, hands clenched on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, staring out the window. 

“They’re on the way,” Tessa said.

He nodded, jerky. 

“We just need to cover for him, just for a little bit,” said Tessa, her own voice uncertain. “They don’t even know he’s here, and they don’t know _we_ know he’s here. We cover for him, he’ll leave, and it’ll all be over. We’ll know he’s safe.”

He nodded again, swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing. 

Tires crunched on the driveway. Tessa went out the screen door and down the steps of the porch. She tried to keep her voice cheerful and even. “Hey, can I help you?”

The muzzle of a gun swung toward her. “Hands over your head,” said a voice, distorted by a bullhorn. 

“Oh my god,” said Tessa, not even having to fake the squeak of terror in her voice, and put her hands up. “I don’t understand—”

Dad came out onto the porch and there was a lot of sudden shouting, through the bullhorn and from the guys in SWAT gear, and from Dad, the latter mostly variations on _What the fuck are you doing to my baby girl?!_ Tessa wanted to shout back at him to calm down and not get shot, but she was worried the effect would be exactly the opposite. 

Dad came thudding down the porch, handcuffed, goons on either side. Tessa’s eyes fixed on the cuffs, and anger shot through her, shoving aside the fear, and she looked down quick before anyone saw it, knew she’d started shaking. She’d _never_ been this angry before. How _dare_ they handcuff Dad, who was hardly a danger to anyone, he was a human being, he was _dad_ you didn’t _do that_ in front of someone’s family, this was unfair, because it wasn’t his fault, not at all. 

For a few moments, things were very quiet.

The head goon, the one with the bullhorn, put it aside and touched his earpiece. “Site secure, sir. We’re ready for you.”

Absolutely nothing proceeded to happen for at least ten minutes. Tessa’s arms started to hurt, then tremble, but she didn’t dare lower them. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t put on sunscreen, she realized, almost certain she could feel a burn coming up on her arms and the backs of her hands. She wondered if they’d shoot her if she tried to swat a fly. At least it was too early in the morning for most of them to be out yet…

She had to pee, too. This dreadful realization happened all at once, and she swallowed hard. No one ever talked about that kind of thing in books and movies. She glanced around at the goons. _Come on, aren’t you guys getting hot and itchy, too?_

If they were, they didn’t seem to notice it. 

A sedan came down the road at a sedate pace. It turned into the driveway, stopped. The doors opened. The passenger got out, sauntered through the maze of menacing SUVs, and came to a halt in front of them.

He looked like a principal, thought Tessa. Someone’s elementary school principal. Running to fat, running to bald, a noncommittal sort of stubbly beard, bad tie, probably expensive suit and glasses… She felt a sort of relief. Elementary school principal, she could manage.

Then she met the eyes behind the glasses, and her stomach dropped. She couldn’t put a finger on it. But the man who looked out from behind those glasses wasn’t anything as benign as a principal, and there was something _wrong_ with the way he evaluated them. Tessa had an abrupt sympathy for anyone who claimed you could tell someone was bad by looking them in the eye. It might not work 100% of the time, but people like this man were enough to think it might. Her skin crawled.

She didn’t like the way he looked at Dad, and it was only the certainty that he’d do far worse to Optimus that kept her from blurting out everything. 

Head goon, who was nowhere near as scary as his boss, for all his skeletal face and height and big guns, came stalking over to her. 

“My name is Mr. Attinger, and I suggest you listen very carefully,” said the new arrival, and oh god he even sounded like a principal. “I will only say this once. We know that you have been hiding the entity known as Optimus Prime. Tell us his location, and we will…overlook your negligence.” He smiled. “There’s no reason to cut short the young lady’s promising career.”

Dad glanced at her. _Oh god,_ thought Tessa. _Don’t say anything, Dad, just don’t, there’s no way they know how long he’s been here, no way they even know he’s transformed, just play it out it’ll be fine—_

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dad.

_Good good good!_ Tessa thought at him, wishing she could have actual telepathy. _Just keep going, Dad, you can do this!_

“You bought a truck from Speedy Scrap on May 29th,” said Attinger. 

“Yeah?” said Dad. “End of the year project with my kid, we figured it might fetch a good price. I was going to teach her to drive it.”

“Mind if we take a look?”

“It got stolen.”

“And you didn’t file a report?”

Dad managed a helpless sort of shrug. “I didn’t want any trouble?”

“Any suspects?”

Dad shrugged again. 

“When was it stolen?”

“Thursday.”

“That’s odd,” said Attinger. “We have an eyewitness report that it was in your driveway last night.”

_Oh shit,_ thought Tessa. 

“How about this?” said Attinger, and gestured at the head goon next to Tessa. He seized her shoulder and slammed her to the ground. She barely managed to catch herself in time to avoid a broken nose, tried to get up and he put a knee in her back.

Something hard and cold nudged her head. Tessa’s startled yelp broke off and she went very still, because she was pretty sure that was a gun. 

“You tell me the truth, and I don’t shoot your little girl.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

_I’m pretty sure cops aren’t allowed to do_ this, went around and around in Tessa’s head, all she could think. Her heart hammered. After a moment she realized it had less to do with the pistol to her head than the terror in Dad’s face, as much of it as she could see through the grass. He didn’t know a thing. Attinger was yelling at the wrong person, and Dad didn’t deserve this. 

“Hey asshole!” she screamed. Tried to. The grass turned it into a squeak. Attinger’s head snapped around. “Yeah, I’m talking to you! You leave him alone. You leave him alone, right the fuck now, got it?” 

_Just buy time, buy time_ , she reminded herself, as his reptilian gaze fixed on her. “Yeah. Didn’t think the girl could be the one you’re looking for, huh? You sexist prick.”

“You,” he said, and casually unholstered his gun, cocked it, “are the most incredibly stupid little girl I’ve met all week.”

The guy above her caught her by the collar and hauled her upright. She staggered. “Given the source, that’s the best compliment I’ve had all week,” she snapped. She felt dumb for it, but Optimus was there. They had to stall for time.

“Mouthing off is really not in your best interest right now.” Attinger leveled the gun at Dad. “Talk.”

“Under the floorboards in the barn. You can’t do this. We have rights. This’ll never hold up in court, threatening to shoot your suspects? I’ll say I was intimidated into making a confession. No one’s gonna believe you.”

He looked at her. Tessa tried not to flinch. His eyes were terrifying, like there was nothing alive behind them. 

“What makes you think you’ll ever see the inside of a courtroom?”

Something in Tessa said _oh shit_ , very quietly. It must have showed on her face because he grinned. 

She swallowed hard. “You do realize that it’s not the Bush Administration anymore.”

“Oh no. Waterboarding is so twenty years ago. Technology has advanced so much.” He still had the gun leveled at Dad. “You sure about the floorboards?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t look at the wash, kept staring at the barn. Hopefully Optimus had the sense to stay put. 

“You know what, I think you’re lying. So tell you what, I’m gonna put a hole through your daddy here, and if your story doesn’t change, we’ll see about those floorboards.”

Tessa stared at him. “You’re joking,” she squeaked. 

He just smiled. 

And then his cellphone rang. 

It wasn’t the sort of ringtone you’d expect an evil guy threatening to shoot your father to have. It was cheerful. And upbeat. 

They stared at each other. The phone _beedled_ merrily. 

Attinger went for it, still watching her, still with the gun trained on Dad. “Attinger. I’ll call you back.”

_“No you won’t_ ,” said the caller. _“You didn’t check for snipers. Tsk tsk, Harold. You’ve gotten sloppy in your old age. Or sloppier.”_

“Charlotte,” said Attinger. “Oh, you—”

_“Let’s keep this professional. Put down that gun, or say goodbye to a perfectly serviceable toupee.”_

“And then what? You know you won’t be walking away.”

Mearing snickered. _“Won’t I? My backup is closer than yours.”_

And the world went boom. 

Optimus came up out of the dry wash like an avenging angel, though the impression wasn’t helped by the tarp getting caught on his smokestacks. Tessa stared at him for a split second, thinking, _Oh shit he looks pissed._

Then she saw Attinger’s aim change and threw herself at his knees. He went down like a log. She rolled away, trying to put distance between them, scrambled to her feet and ran for cover. Everyone else was paying attention to the very angry transformer pelting across the driveway, not to her, not to Dad. 

Two more trucks burst through the fence, a handful of people clinging to them. Tessa caught a glimpse of Mearing, balancing on a running board. 

She’d kicked off the high heels. That was…kinda satisfying. Tessa wasn’t sure she could have forgiven Mearing if she’d been able to go into battle in six inch heels. In the meantime, she concentrated on hiding behind the porch. 

The battle, if you could call it that, didn’t last long at all. The goons dove for their cars, screeched back onto the road, and fled, with Optimus taking a few stumbling strides after them in pursuit, transformer-sized-gun leveled. 

Very slowly, Tessa poked her head out from behind the porch. The lawn was a wreck. There was something smoldering on the porch. Mearing and a lot of big tough army guys were striding around, shouting things.

Dad ran to her. “Sweetie? Sweetie, are you all right?” He hugged her, hard, something she would have appreciated if she didn’t feel like she was going to puke. Every time she blinked, she saw Attinger aiming that gun at him. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, she gulped, feeling her mouth feel with saliva. _Oh shit_ , she thought, wriggled out of the hug, and threw up. 

A lot. 

“Oh no, sweetie,” said Dad, and pulled her hair out of her face. She managed a weak, “Thanks,” and went back to the business at hand. 

After a while, she realized Optimus was leaning over her as well and looking worried, which made her giggle weakly.  

“I’m okay,” she managed, between retches. “Bodily functions—oh god.”

It took a while for the dry heaves to subside, and she lurched away from the mess she’d made of what had been the roses. Dad handed her a water bottle, which she poured over her face and then used to rinse her mouth. She wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it, wasn’t inclined to ask. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I just…need to sit.”They didn’t have bits with puking in action movies, unless it was supposed to be funny or because the heroes had just found the results of the bad guys experimenting on some poor hapless civilians. Totally unrealistic expectations there. 

“We have to move.” Tessa looked up at Mearing, who frowned down at her. She bit her lip. _Do you think I_ wanted _to throw up, lady? I was the one with a gun to my head, thanks!_

Above her, Optimus rumbled something that might have been either thoughtful or a threat. Mearing’s attention turned to him, her eyes narrowing. 

“What is your plan of action, Professor Mearing?” asked Optimus, very politely. He reached behind him and freed the remaining tarp from his smokestacks, carefully placing it on the grass.

“We’ll rendezvous with your Autobots,” said Mearing. “There are still some unaccounted for. Doubtless you know who.”

Optimus gave her a long, challenging stare. “And then?”

“Then we rescue Ratchet.”

“I see.”

Two of the guys who’d come in with Mearing strode over, looking like they did this every day. Tessa hoped no one noticed the barf in the bushes, and staggered upright. 

No one was paying attention to her. They were both looking up at Optimus with big grins. “Good to see you in one piece, big guy!”

“It is good to see you as well, William Lennox, Robert Epps.” 

“Sarah and Annabelle safe?” demanded Mearing.

“Yeah,” said Lennox. “They’re elsewhere. I pushed all the panic buttons. Epps too; his partner’s with them.”

“Good man. Welcome to the wrong side of the law.” 

“Can’t be the wrong side,” said the guy Tessa guessed to be Epps. Holy shit he was tall. “We’ve got Optimus.”

“I am honored that you think so,” said Optimus, and held out a hand to Tessa. “Tessa, are you unharmed?”

“Yeah, fine now I’m done with the puking. Did you get the evacuation box?”

“It is in my subspace.”

“You put together an evacuation box?” That was Lennox. Tessa nodded. 

“Yeah, the second I realized what he was,” she said. “It’s pretty big so I hid it with him and asked him to grab it if something happened. It’s got stuff for him and us.”

Lennox looked up at Optimus. “Optimus, keep this one..”

“Speaking of which, where is Sam?” asked Mearing. 

“Didn’t you hear? Wrapped his car around a tree a few years ago. How’d you miss that one? Thought you kept tabs on all of us.” There was something nasty in Epps’s voice. 

Mearing’s eyebrows went up. “Has anyone told Bumblebee?”

“Bumblebee’s still alive? That’s some good news.”

“More Autobots than you think are alive,” said Mearing. “And we’re going to find them. Come on. It’s time to revolutionize foreign policy.”

They all watched her walk away. 

“You know, I think the time off has let her unwind some,” said Epps. 

“Or indulge her fondness for snappy one-liners,” said Lennox. “Let’s go, people.”

“A moment,” said Optimus. Mearing paused, since Optimus’s conversational voice could be heard across a football field, and spun on the ball of her foot to frown at him again. “Bringing such a force to meet the Autobots would be unwise.”

“Have you a better idea?” snapped Mearing. 

“I will meet up with the Autobots, and bring them to the rendezvous coordinates,” said Optimus. “I dare not bring you with me; if they saw armed humans in non-sentient vehicles, they would assume they’d been betrayed. I will take Tessa. One human will not read as a threat, and I think of all of you, she will make the best case for your species.”

Mearing’s eyebrows rose. 

“Now wait a minute!” That was Dad. “Look, I just saw my little girl nearly get her brains blown out because of you. I’m not about to let you take her away!”

“Dad,” said Tessa, “Calm down.” 

“I am _not_ going to calm down!”

“I’m going to be with Optimus.” Tessa waited a moment for that to sink in. “He’s what, like, the top threat to national security? And he’ll be looking out for me. Besides, they’re going to follow the huge convoy of SUVs, not just one junky truck. Sorry, Optimus. One truck with shielding on him. And we’ll meet up soon.” She didn’t say the other thing on her mind. The thought of someone aiming a gun at him again made the water feel like it wanted to return. He’d be safe with them. She didn’t want him in danger again. 

Lennox raised his eyebrows at Optimus, then turned to Dad. “If Optimus is okay with it, I’d trust him,” he said, then grinned. “He’s good with kids. He babysat Annabelle a few times.”

“And when would we see you again?” snapped Dad, folding his arms. 

“Two days. No longer,” said Optimus. “I will take good care of Tessa, Cade Yeager, and I will drive carefully.”

“Dad, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” She’d promised to do what Optimus recommended if it all went wrong. Dad didn’t know that. And he’d have a bunch of army guys looking out for him. He’d be okay. They’d keep him safe. “I’ll be careful.”

“We’re wasting time,” snapped Mearing.

He finally nodded, a jerky gesture he obviously didn’t want to make. “Okay. Okay, fine. Be safe, kiddo.”

“Optimus, can I have the emergency kit? I need to get Dad’s stuff out.” She looked at Lennox and Epps. “You’re okay for food, right?”

“Just fine,” said Epps, and raised his eyebrows at Lennox with an expression Tessa didn’t take the time to decipher. She pulled Dad’s bag out of the kit Optimus produced, stuffed the rest back in. 

“Okay,” she said. “Dad, make sure Mrs. McCurdy knows to take care of the cats. Tell her we’re on vacation or something.” She looked around, at the army guys on the lawn, at the smoldering spot on the porch and the house she’d probably never be able to return to. She tamped down the desire to cry. “Okay. Um. We’d better get going, I guess?”

Optimus nodded as well and folded himself down into a truck. Tessa thought she heard Epps say, in a very quiet voice, _“She’s right, that is a really junky looking truck,”_ but pretended to ignore it, hauling the kit into the cab with her and sitting tentatively on the busted upholstery. She looked down at all of them and swallowed hard. 

Dad came up and scrambled up onto the running board, hanging onto the open door. “Tess…”

“I know, Dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t think it’d come to this.” She hugged him as best she could. “Let’s see if we can make it better, okay?” Like he always said, when something went wrong. Her voice wavered. She hoped he hadn’t noticed; she was trying very hard to be brave for all of them and she hadn’t realized how much it would _hurt_. “Love you.”

His free arm tightened. “Love you too, sweetie. Be careful.”

“I will. I promise.”

He messed with her hair, swallowed hard, climbed down again. “You,” he said to Optimus. “You take care of her, got it? Or I’m coming after you. With a welder.”

“Have no fear, Cade Yeager,” said Optimus. “No harm will come to her while she is under my protection.”

And with that, they were off. Tessa turned to watch, and Dad followed them down the driveway. Guilt gnawed at her stomach; he looked very small and alone standing at the foot of it, watching them go. 

Soon, he and the house vanished behind a rise of the land. She wiped her eyes, hard, and turned her attention to the road ahead. 

 


	11. Chapter 11

She didn’t realize he might take the ‘junky looking truck’ comment to heart.

A few miles out of town, a narrow two-lane road, a fairly new and lovingly detailed Peterbuilt came the other direction, chrome gleaming in the early morning light, trailer looking shabby in comparison. Optimus made a very strange rumbling whirr, and when they passed, blue light lanced out from his side and played over the other vehicle. 

“What was tha—” Tessa started, and then everything changed around her. She yelped and hung on, as the bench seat shifted into two bucket seats and the back of the cab elongated. The nose of the truck elongated to resemble the one they’d just passed, and his dim paint sluffed off like a snake shedding its skin, revealing scarlet flames on a deep blue background. The dashboard in front of her rearranged itself, gleaming as it did. His sideview mirrors rippled and reconfigured, bigger, newly shined. 

“I um, didn’t mean the junky looking truck thing as an insult,” Tessa said, rather weakly.

“Changing my appearance is beneficial,” he said. “It will help us elude detection.” Pause. Then, more quietly, “And it has been far too long since I felt like myself.”

They turned onto the interstate sometime after noon, where Optimus joined the long line of trucks on the westbound I-40. Around one, Tessa saw a rest stop and suggested a break, mostly because she didn’t want to get peanut butter all over Optimus’s interior. Optimus agreed, and when they pulled off, a hologram of a driver shimmered into being next to her. 

Tessa lurched a bit with surprise, then looked more closely at the hologram. There was a definite Optimus-ish-ness to it—an older gentleman with a mustache and a very kind face.

“To discourage questions,” said Optimus, the hologram’s mouth moving in time with his words. 

It definitely did. Tessa ate her sandwich at a rest-stop picnic table, while Optimus pretended to do the same with a holographic version of the same sandwich. He had a little trouble with animating the swallowing. 

Optimus had parked in the shade, so it was only when she was a few feet away from him that she noticed it. She stopped where she was. “Um. Optimus? I thought we were supposed to be undercover. You’ve um, kind of got a great big _shoot me_ badge on your grille.”

The hologram leaned forward to look at the Autobot brand on the grille in question. “You think it will attract attention?”

“No shit.” Both avatar and truck seemed to droop. She felt like an awful person. “I mean, we are kinda getting hunted by the US government, Optimus. They’d probably notice that. Maybe keep it on your steering wheel, like before?”

Truck and avatar sighed. “Very well.” 

Very slowly, the brand sank back under the surface of his grille. 

“Sorry,” she said. “I just…”

“You are only trying to keep me safe. I understand.”

She patted his fender and climbed back in. 

They were still on the 40 that night, and stopped at a burger joint for dinner. Tessa stayed in the truck; Optimus sent his avatar in with some of her pocket money to get a burger and fries. She was very careful not to spill as she ate, and he stopped specially at another truck stop so she could throw the trash away. He didn’t approve of littering. 

The long summer day slid into night. The countryside changed, dry and red in the fading sun, small scrubby bushes and palo verde racing by. Then darkness, scruffy branches outlined against the sky.

Tessa leaned a shoulder on the door and tucked her legs up. “I hope Dad’s okay with them,” she said. “I wish we hadn’t needed to leave him…”

“I am sorry,” said Optimus. “But I do not trust Mearing, and though both Will Lennox and Robert Epps are good men, Mearing has had long experience in manipulating them to do what she sees as necessary. Letting them know I have doubts about her would undermine the cohesion of the entire unit, and that is something we cannot afford. I need someone I can trust among them, someone who will tell me if there is something amiss.”

Tessa sighed. “Yeah,” she said. “I get it. Sorry, I just…worry.”

“Your father is quite capable of managing competently on his own,” said Optimus. “Perhaps more so than you give him credit for.”

She giggled a little. “Yeah, I guess so.”

She watched the scrub go by, the occasional flicker of sodium streetlights as they passed a town or a truckstop or the strange facilities out in the midst of the desert. After a while, she said, “What should I do when we get there?”

“Simply be yourself.”

“And what should that do?”

“Restore their faith in humanity.”

Tessa couldn’t help the snort. “Oh, yes right, that should be easy! Optimus, I’m not…” _I’m not that special, I’m not that smart, I just…can’t bear hurting helpless creatures, and is that really so unusual? Dad raised me to do the right thing, but if you could see half the things I_ think _, you wouldn’t have such faith in me either!_

“You restored mine.”

_I can’t even get into college!_ Tessa thought, staring out the window. Tears stung her eyes. She hunched down against the door. “I’m gonna get some sleep.”

“Do,” said Optimus, comforting. “It will be a long drive, and we have much to do at the end of it.”

“Yeah,” said Tessa, staring out the window again. 

 

* * *

 

It felt good to have a road under his tires again, to race along under the open sky. For a moment, Optimus let himself relax, admire the spread of stars over them, a great upturned bowl over the flat dry land, brilliant as they had been on Cybertron. For all their strangeness, that was a comfort. 

The slight weight in his passenger seat made his spark hurt.

He wasn’t accustomed to carrying humans around. When he had last been around them, it had been in dangerous situations, when he might need to transform at a moment’s notice, and a human in his cab would have been too easily crushed. Ironhide, Ratchet, Bumblebee—they had had the luxury of carrying their human friends, but he had not. He had been there to protect his Autobots and their human compatriots. So carrying a human was an alien sensation. 

She was in recharge now, making the odd ventilations Lennox had assured him were normal, noisy as they were, and the trust implicit in that brought guilt up hard in his intakes. After all he had done, all the lives and sparks guttered at his hands, this little human trusted him. 

He deserved nothing of the sort. 

Seeing Mearing again had brought that to the forefront of his processor, and he was ashamed that he had allowed it to stay anywhere else. He was angry, too, a slow simmering rage mixed with guilt and agony, and he remembered the promises, the pleas, the assurances, all fallen on deaf human ears. The silence so persuasive that he had at last agreed with it. 

For a moment, he had imagined Tessa Yeager’s weight to be that of a bitlet, content, trusting, well fueled, and then the shame rolled over him. What would the Autobots think? Would the memory of their shared crime suffice to bind them together? Or had they fallen into argument, scattered and perished?

He did not know how many still lived. 

He checked the tightness of the seatbelt, made sure of its integrity. 

Tessa Marie Yeager was as close to a sparkling as any of them were going to see, ever again. 

 

* * *

 

“Tessa, we are almost there.”

Tessa grumbled and opened her eyes. She’d been snoring, she realized, and there was drool on the seat. She started scrubbing at it with a sleeve. “Oh no, I’m sorry!” 

“There is no need to apologize. I have been on this planet long enough to understand that humans leak.”

_Oh god don’t remind me,_ thought Tessa, as her bladder protested. “How long till we get there?”

“A half hour.”

“Can we pause? I uh, need to do something organic.”

Tessa felt much more human after that, and eyed the granola bars with distaste. But she wasn’t about to make herself a peanut butter sandwich in a moving vehicle—what if she dropped it? Poor Optimus might get mice again, and at the least, he’d smell of peanut butter, which wasn’t a thing you did to your friends. Granola bar it was.

She used a bit of the water in the water bottle to wash off the upholstery she’d slobbered on, still feeling apologetic. “Who should I expect to meet?”

“I do not know,” said Optimus. “I have been in stasis and a prisoner for so long that I have no way of knowing who is still online, only that someone responded to my message. Stay close to me once we arrive; they will not be friendly to humans, but they will not disobey me.”

“Why?” asked Tessa. If she was about to encounter murderous robots, she wanted some reassurance that her protection against getting shot was effective.

“I am their Prime,” said Optimus. “The Decepticons do not recognize me, holding that Prime is a meaningless title. But my Autobots still have faith in me.” He was silent a long moment. “And I must ensure that faith does not go unsubstantiated.” 

Tessa looked out the windshield. They were coming up on Sedona, and the great pillars of red rock rose in the distance under a slate-gray sky. It was probably going to rain soon. Not a pleasant prospect. 

There, movement on one of the nearby dirt tracks, and a yellow Camaro popped up onto the road in front of them, honking as it did. Tessa almost dropped the granola bar. 

“Bumblebee,” said Optimus, sounding happier than he had in a long time. 

“Is that one of them?” Tessa asked. 

“Yes,” said Optimus. “I believe you should become good friends. He is young, and brash, but he has a good spark.”

Tessa wondered what that said about her, but kept quiet. 

There was a much longer honk behind them. Tessa turned as a green and black corvette overtook them, honked again, and sped ahead. Bumblebee revved his engines and followed, honking indignantly. 

“Are they usually so noisy?”

“Given that Bumblebee and Crosshairs have never gotten along well, the last few years must have been quite trying for whoever is in command of this group.” After a few moments, both cars came zooming back and fell back into line, Bumblebee leading, Crosshairs bringing up the rear. 

“However, I believe a refresher on Earth driving laws would be in order,” said Optimus.  

“Just slightly.”

Bumblebee slowed and nosed off onto another dirt track. They drove for what seemed like forever, at what seemed like a snail’s pace. Tessa rolled down the window and stuck her head out. 

“Optimus,” said Crosshairs, and though Tessa had gotten used to Optimus talking in his alt mode, it was still weird hearing a voice come from a Corvette, “What the _fuck_ are you doing bringing a human with you?”

“Tessa Marie Yeager saved my life,” said Optimus. “She is a friend.”

Crosshairs made a noise of pure disgust. “Human friends got us here in the first place.”

Optimus didn’t respond. Tessa cast a nervous glance at Crosshairs, then looked at Bumblebee, who cocked a sideview mirror at her in what seemed like a friendly manner.

At least that was promising. Tessa looked around and spotted movement on one of the rock formations. Someone was up there, a big, bulky figure. “What’s that?”

“Hound or Bulkhead,” said Optimus. “In either case, one of ours.”

The figure whooped and fired several rounds into the air. Optimus made the staticky equivalent of an exasperated sigh, and added, “Certainly Hound. Bulkhead has more restraint.”

They bounced to a halt beside one of the formations. Tessa stepped out when Optimus shrugged the door open, grabbing the bag as she did. He transformed.

It took a while. The reformat probably changed what went where, and he seemed to have a bad moment figuring out where his doors ought to go, and the smokestacks took a while to reconfigure correctly on his back. She blinked up at him, trying to get used to how _glossy_ everything was, bright red and blue flames and clean metal without a hint of rust. He looked…well, healthy, in a way he hadn’t even after they’d repaired him. “Is this all of you?” 

“Drift’s on his way,” said Crosshairs, who’d turned into a fairly short mech with what looked like _goggles_ on his forehead. He returned Tessa’s gaze with open hostility. 

“I am not familiar with Drift,” Optimus started, and then Hound came down the side of the rock wall, saw Tessa, and startled badly. 

“What the _frag_ is that thing doing here?” he snarled. “Optimus, step back, you had a stowaway!” 

Tessa looked down the barrel of a gun for the second time in twenty-four hours, and this time was a lot more scared. She dropped the emergency kit and raised her open hands. 

“She is a friend,” said Optimus. “Lower your weapon, Hound. She saved my life, nearly at the cost of her own. She and her family are under our protection, and will not harm us.”

Hound looked at her, suspicion and doubt. “Are you sure?”

“She repaired me when I was grievously wounded, and defied the government she is subject to to keep me safe,” said Optimus. “I am sure.”

The gun lowered. Tessa let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. 

The fourth Autobot appeared, a white Lotus Exige. Dad would have freaked, but Tessa wondered briefly how the rocks and scrub were getting along with everyone; no one here really was designed for offroading. Bumblebee probably had it best.

The newcomer transformed deliberately and even more slowly than Optimus had, as if he were reluctant to show his face. 

Optimus scooped Tessa off her feet, holding her shielded in one hand close to his chest. He transformed the cannons out of his other arm and leveled it at the newcomer. “Deadlock.”

“Drift,” the newcomer responded, a male voice. She thought. Tessa squirmed around so she could peer out between Optimus’s fingers. Drift was surprisingly big in his standard form for someone with such a little alt, wide chest, wide hips, two swords on his back, and he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the gun leveled at his chest, red optics fixed on Optimus, aquiline face twisted with disdain. His helm came to two high points, which gave Tessa the immediate uncharitable impression of bunny ears, even though everything else about him screamed predator. His mouth opened slightly, a sneer displaying pointed teeth.

“Every being,” he said, cold, “deserves an opportunity for redemption. You said that once, Optimus.”

“Do not mock my words,” said Optimus. The cannon whined. 

Drift took a step forward. “I’m not,” he said. 

“You are a Decepticon.”

“I was. I tired of the slaughter. Too many innocent sparks, too many innocent lives. Every sentient being deserves an opportunity for redemption. I am seeking mine.” He smiled, distinctly mocking. “So, Optimus Prime, do you believe what you said, do you hold by it? Or, like Megatron, do you simply say what is convenient?”

“You killed _worlds._ ”

“I said I was seeking redemption, not that it would be easy,” said Drift.

There was a long pause, and Optimus lowered his cannon. Equally slowly, he put Tessa back on her feet.

“Glad to see you survived,” said Crosshairs, to break the silence. “We thought you were captured.”

“I was,” said Optimus. “The human standing before you is the reason for my survival.”

All attention focused on Tessa. She shifted from foot to foot and tried a small wave. 

They looked away, back at Optimus. “Seriously?” said Hound.

“Yes,” said Optimus. 

“Can she build us a spaceship?” asked Crosshairs. “Because that would be useful.”

“No, she cannot. But there is a ship we can commandeer, and there is a chance that the other captured Cybertronians may yet live. Including Ratchet.”

Silence. They all looked at each other. Drift’s eyes narrowed. “Where is he being held?”

“He was not captured by the humans, but by Lockdown.”

Everyone gasped. “Frag,” said Hound, with feeling. 

“Well, he’s scrap,” said Crosshairs, almost cheerfully. Bumblebee looked down at his feet. 

“Why?” said Drift, his voice very soft.

“The audio the humans recorded seems to indicate that Lockdown is looking for me,” said Optimus. “And that because of this, he took Ratchet prisoner.”

“He probably thought Ratchet had useful information,” said Drift. “Failing that, he could use Ratchet as bait.”

“How do you know so much about him?” demanded Crosshairs.

Drift’s mouth twisted. “Because he’s come after me before. He murdered a lot of good mecha to get to me, too.” He touched the hilts of his swords. Tessa felt Optimus tense. “We must save Ratchet. I will do so alone if need be.”

Optimus simply looked at them. Drift stared back, challenging. 

“Very well,” said Optimus at last, reluctantly. 

 


	12. Chapter 12

“So, boss bot,” said Crosshairs, plopping himself down in the dirt of what passed for the Autobots’ base camp, “what’s the big plan?”

Optimus carefully deposited Tessa on a rock, well away from careless metal feet. “We will have to cooperate with Professor Mearing once again, but this time, I have no intention of trusting her.”

“Good,” said Bumblebee, a clip from a radio show of some sort, emphatic. Drift frowned at him from where he lounged against a rock face. 

“Forgive me,” he said, “but aren’t the humans the ones hunting us?”

For all the arrogant elegance of his posture, the question seemed perfectly sincere, no edges to it. But Optimus still stared at him a long while before answering. 

“They are,” he said. “But if they offer us a way to rescue Ratchet, their crimes are insignificant against the opportunity to rescue one of our own.”

Bumblebee examined the ground between his feet. Hound busied himself with a gun. Crosshairs folded his arms and wouldn’t look at Optimus. Drift simply looked as confused as Tessa felt. 

“No matter what has passed between us before,” said Optimus. 

“We still need to get off the fucking planet,” said Crosshairs. 

Tessa half wondered if Optimus was about to tell him off, but he seemed to restrain himself with an effort of will. “Lockdown does have a ship.”

“You propose we steal a ship from _Lockdown?”_ said Hound. “I like it.”

“Dumbest thing I’ve heard all week,” said Crosshairs. 

“You sure about this?” said Bumblebee, laced with static.

“I am.” Optimus looked at Drift again, who gave him an equally evaluating look back. 

“It has a certain poetic justice,” he said, and smiled, showing a hint of fang. “And destroying Lockdown’s ability to menace other worlds is certainly worth it.”

Optimus lengthened the stare. Things got awkward. “Yes,” he said. “Preserving other worlds from Lockdown’s depredations is indeed important. We must also ensure that he will not damage this one.”

Silence again, deep, complete, with everyone’s attention on Optimus. Then, “I suppose so,” said Hound. 

Optimus looked around. “All of you are in need of repairs.” 

“Well, _yes_ ,” said Crosshairs. “There’s only so much a pretty coat of paint can cover up.”

“Indeed,” said Optimus. “I have obtained information about the location of an ally. We should set off immediately, as our human…compatriots are not aware of this detour.”

“Don’t trust them, huh?” said Crosshairs.

Optimus looked down. “I do not. Bumblebee…Professor Mearing informed me that Sam—“

“ _I KNOW!”_ Bumblebee snarled, radio cranked up as high as it could go, raising echoes among the cliffs, and whirled, stalked away among the rocks

“Yeah, should have told you boss,” drawled Crosshairs. “He’s still sore about that.”

“As he should be,” said Optimus, staring after Bumblebee. “The boy was a friend. But we have no time to waste.” So saying, he rose, and vanished after Bumblebee.

Tessa, perched on her rock, gulped as several very big robots focused on her.

“So what the hell makes _you_ so special?” said Crosshairs. 

Tessa stiffened and glared back. “Timing,” she said. 

“You threatening him or anything, kid?”

“No. I just happened to try to repair a truck that turned out to be alive.”

“Hey, Crosshairs,” said Hound. “How about you lay off? Optimus won’t be happy.”

“Fuck him,” snarled Crosshairs. “ _Fuck_ Optimus Prime, all right? Even when he bothers himself to come back for us, he does it with a _squishie_. What do you wanna bet this is about keeping _her_ safe? Primus’s children? He doesn’t _care_. Our fucking _Prime_ doesn’t _care_ , Hound, how about you get that through that two byte chip masquerading as a processor!”

“Then why did you so readily assent to his plan?” asked Drift, very quietly. 

“Because it’ll get me off this planet,” said Crosshairs. “Don’t pretend that’s not why you’re here, too. Your precious leader got his head ripped off. You have nowhere else to go.”

“Do not pretend to understand me,” said Drift, a warning. 

“Oooh, look at me, I’m so scared. Snarl a little harder, _Deadlock_ , I’m not sure even the human takes you seriously.”

Drift bared his teeth. Tessa gulped. Each incisor was the size of her hand and forearm together. The robot with his bunny-ears suddenly didn’t seem the least bit amusing. “Don’t call me that.”

Even Crosshairs quailed at that, blustered, tried to brush it off. Drift stared at him another moment, red optics thoughtful, then turned his attention away again. 

Tessa tucked herself up smaller on the rock and waited for Optimus to come back, heart thudding. 

At least she could warn him.

 

* * *

 

Lunch found them leaving the 17 and making the turn westward onto the 40 again. Tessa was getting sick of the 40. She was even sicker of it after several hundreds of miles of California desert, which somehow managed to be uglier than the Arizona desert on the other side of the border. 

Darkness found them in the outskirts of Bakersfield. Tessa nestled down on the seat and leaned her forehead on the windowsill. At least Optimus’s new form had air conditioning.

Tessa decided she hated the 5 even more than the 40.

On the other side of Bakersfield, they came to a slow stop outside what Tessa guessed was an auto repair shop in a decrepit neighborhood, Optimus’s bright paint conspicuous among the battered cars in the lot. Tessa hunched down below the window and wondered if Optimus automatically locked his doors. “Um. Do we want to be here?”

A dusty sign swung slowly in the hot summer air, illegible with age. 

“Yes,” said Optimus, bringing his avatar into existence. “You will be perfectly safe.”

Behind them, the other Autobots filed in, one after another, gleaming under sodium streetlights. _Oh man_ , thought Tessa. _Not conspicuous at all_.

“It would be unwise to have you wait outside,” said Optimus, and shrugged open a door. Tessa sighed and followed him to the office, where he raised a hand and knocked, carefully.

Locks slid and rattled on the other side. The door swung open, blazing florescent light onto the dusty pavement. 

“Oh _fuck_ ,” said the woman who’d opened the door. “You’re joking.”

Optimus’s avatar made a helpless little shrugging gesture, palms spread. “My apologies for the intrusion, Mikeala Banes. We are not in the best of situations.”

“No shit,” said the woman. “Come around back. I’ll do what I can.” She jerked her chin at Tessa. “Who’s this? Your newest human messiah?”

“This is Tessa Marie Yeager. She has given me hope for both our species.” Oh god, not a trace of irony. Tessa felt like shrinking. 

Mikeala raised an eyebrow at her. “Newest human messiah, got it. There’s a new packet of cookies in the kitchen, kiddo. Keep out of the beer.”

“No problem,” squeaked Tessa.

“You.” Mikeala jerked her head at Optimus. “Around back, now. And so help me, if you as much as squeak while I’m working…”

“Understood,” said Optimus. “Bumblebee will also require assistance.”

“I’ll get a gag,” said Mikeala darkly, and stepped back. “Come on in, Tessa. Have a cookie and a coloring book…”

She was _serious_ about the coloring book. And seemed to think Tess was about nine. Tessa tried to keep herself occupied, but even the satisfaction of evenly applying crayon to cheap paper was nothing next to helping out, and so, clutching an extra cookie for the trip, she wandered out to where Mikeala was working, mostly hidden inside Bumblebee’s hood while Optimus rumbled explanations at her. 

“I can help?” she said, and winced at the question in her voice.

“Kid, this isn’t legos,” said Mikeala, somewhat muffled.

“I know,” said Tessa. “But I worked at a mechanic’s, a couple summers, and Dad and I did the first repairs, and I’d really like to know how to do them properly. I can hold stuff and stay out of the way, if you’d prefer that.”

Mikeala pulled herself out and looked at her. “Jesus, you can’t be older than fourteen.”

“I’m seventeen,” said Tessa. She folded her arms. “And I’ve already been shot at plenty. Too much to pretend to be nine. So. Can I help?”

Mikeala looked at Optimus. “You have got to stop picking up kids. Yeah sure. You can help.”

Tessa grinned and scrambled down the steps into the workshop proper. At last, something she could do. 

 

* * *

 

“Okay, that’ll hold you.” Mikeala straightened up and headed for the sink. “I’d tell you to rest, but I know better. By the way, don’t you keep Ratch around for this kind of stuff?”

The silence that met her question was more eloquent than anything else could have been. She said, quietly, “Oh. I see.” Then, “Tess and I are going to have a girl talk in the house. Won’t take long. No snooping.”

She took Tessa’s shoulder in a firm grip and steered her back into the kitchen. In the same gesture, she snagged a beer and popped it open. “So. How’d you run into him? You seem like the straight A daddy’s girl type, not the teenage rebel.”

“He um, kinda turned up in my barn,” said Tessa. “I felt bad for him so I fixed him up.”

Mikeala stared at her. Took a drink, like it was something to do with her hands. “Shit,” she said quietly. “Look, kiddo…”

Tessa folded her arms and frowned at her. “Can you stop calling me that?”

A bit of a smile. “Sorry. I picked it up from Ratchet. And no offense, but at my age, you _really_ look like a kid. But Optimus’s avatar is beginning to look less like my granddaddy, so take that as you will.”

Tessa managed an uneasy smile. “How did you run into him, anyway, Ms. Banes?”

“Ms. Banes? Great, now I really feel old.” Mikeala put the beer down and folded her arms. “My high school boyfriend’s first car turned out to be Bumblebee. Things got…interesting after that.”

Tessa giggled. She could only imagine how much trouble Bumblebee would have been. She was glad Optimus had been the one to show up on her doorstep. 

“Has anyone warned you?” asked Mikeala. “I mean, giant robot best friend, coolest thing ever, isn’t it?”

“It kind of is…” Tessa admitted.

“Died yet?”

“What?”

“Have you died yet?”

“No? I think it’d be kind of noticeable?”

“Mm.” Mikeala went for the beer again. “You might die.”

“I might die crossing the street.”

“You might die with extreme prejudice. Look, kid—Tessa—about Optimus. Be really careful, okay? I know he seems nice. I know he seems sweet. But he _will_ ruin your life.” She raised her eyebrows. Mikeala frowned. “You think I’m joking. I know. If someone’d told me, or Sam, the same, we’d have laughed. But he _will ruin your life._ Even get you killed. Like Sam, who was a fucking turd, but being a fucking turd shouldn’t be a capital offense.”

“I’m not Sam.”

“Yes,” said Mikeala. “You’re a decent human being, and it will get you deader. Look. Optimus is cute and all, but sooner or later, you’re going to meet your first Decepticon. You don’t want to do that. Hell, you might even meet Megatron. I know he’s supposed to be dead, but we put him down once and he _got back up_. He’s not just a giant alien war criminal, he’s the Energizer bunny of alien war criminals, and he’s got a _thing_ about Optimus, and you might as well have a nice big target painted on your forehead. Tess, I’m doing you a favor. Get your family, get yourself, and _get out._ You’re too young to be dealing with this shit.” She looked down at the cracked linoleum. “You have a life. Don’t throw it away for them. It’s not going to help.”

“You did,” Tessa said quietly. “Didn’t you? You and Sam?”

 


	13. Chapter 13

Mikeala snorted. “Then I know what I’m talking about.”

Tessa just looked at her. “What about doing the right thing?”

“It’s the best way I know to get into trouble.” Mikeala saw the look in her eye and sighed. “Here. I’ll give you my number. You get into trouble too big to get out, call me. Promise?”

“Yeah,” said Tessa. “I promise.”

“Good,” said Mikeala, and drained the beer.

“About Ratchet,” started Tessa, and trailed off when Mikeala looked at her. 

“Don’t,” she said, her voice hard. “I don’t want to know. I’ve lost enough of them—I don’t want to know, okay?”

“He’s not dead. We’re going to rescue him.”

Mikeala stopped dead, stared. “Oh,” she said. “Shit, kid, you sure as hell don’t do things by halves, do you? Who got him? Megatron?”

Tessa shook her head. “No. Someone called Lockdown.”

“Can’t say it rings a bell.”

“Optimus is, uh, concerned about him.”

“Concerned, huh?” Mikeala went to the recycling bin and tossed the beer. “Huh. Your parents know you’re mixed up in this?”

“Yeah,” said Tessa, with the sudden suspicion that if she’d said no, Mikeala would have called them. “Dad’s helping me.”

There was a very long pause, as Mikeala just looked at her. “And would you be all right with your Dad falling into this Lockdown’s clutches?”

“What?” Tessa straightened up, glared at her. “That’s not funny—”

“It sure as hell isn’t, and it sure as hell is something you’d better be thinking about with Optimus in your life. You doing anything with other humans?”

Tessa looked away, unsure if she should say anything. 

“I’ll take that as a yes. Look, Tess. A bit of information? Not all the bad guys are robots.”

Tessa shuddered, remembering Attinger. Had that only been yesterday? “Already found that out, thanks.”

The door to the garage shuddered. Mikeala snarled under her breath and yanked it open.

Optimus lowered the single finger he’d used to knock. “I beg your pardon, Mikeala Banes, but time is short.”

“Of course it is,” said Mikeala. “One thing, Optimus.”

“Yes, Mikeala Banes?”  
“You’d better keep Tessa safe. Or I’m coming after you.”

“I understand.”

“You’d better. Any others of your merry band of idiots need repairs?”

“The others have assured me that they are well,” said Optimus. 

A long pause. Then, Mikeala, “Optimus…you heard about Sam?”

Optimus ducked his head. “I did. I am sorry.”

“It was a car crash,” said Mikeala. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

Optimus’s gaze slid sideways to Tessa.

“Well? Doesn’t it?”

“It does,” said Optimus. 

“He wasn’t a bad driver,” said Mikeala. “He wasn’t a bad driver, and wrapped his car around a tree on a road he knew damn well.”

“Where?” 

“The 1, near Lompoc.”

Optimus’s optics flared bright. Surprise, Tessa guessed. “Indeed, not an easy road, and not one Sam would have driven without great caution.”

“And if he was that damn impaired when driving it, wouldn’t he have gone off a cliff rather than choosing the less expensive option of a tree? You’d have to fucking _aim_ to hit a tree and not go over a cliff on that road.”

“Indeed.”

“So.” Mikeala jerked her chin at Tessa. “Watch out for the fucking kid, because we’re not just playing pattycake with the Decepticons anymore.”

Optimus looked from one to the other, tilting his head to get a good view of them through the door. “No, I do not think we are. I shall take your concerns into consideration, Mikeala Banes. Tessa, we must be going.”

“Right,” said Mikeala, clapped Tessa on the shoulder. “Okay. You be careful.” She handed Tessa a sticky note. “Call that number if things get too fucked up. Now go. And don’t get dead.”

 

* * *

 

“Tessa?” said Optimus, very tentative, an hour into the drive.

“Yeah?”

“Despite Mikeala Banes’s misgivings, I will ensure that no harm comes to you. Not while I still function.”

He absolutely meant it, and Tessa felt herself smile a little. She huddled down in her seat and leaned her head against the window. She wasn’t sure if he could carry through on the promise. But the fact he’d promised meant a lot, made her feel safer already. “Thanks. That helps, it really does.”

“I am glad,” he said. 

 

* * *

 

Six AM. Optimus had pulled over at some point in the night to rest, the rest of the Autobots trailing him like ducklings, and they were now two hours away from San Jose. They’d stopped at a truck stop so Tessa could make use of the facilities; a small, drear collection of concrete buildings and trees in the middle of a grassy plain, high thin cloud and haze obscuring anything interesting. Tessa yawned, staggering out of the bathroom, and froze.

“Tessa?” said Dad’s voice, around the corner. “Tessa, are you there?”

She felt herself grin. So this was the rendezvous. She hurried around the corner toward the water fountains and yelped as cloth enveloped her head. She kicked, tried to drive an elbow back into her attacker’s stomach, and it had way less effect than it did in the movies. Someone cursed and punched her in the stomach, and while she was still whooping for breath, handcuffed her and dragged her into what she guessed was a car. 

She’d managed maybe half a scream before that punch, heard Optimus’s voice rise behind them in anger and alarm. The world lurched, hard. Someone pushed her down, and she heard tires screech. 

Something jabbed her in the arm, sharp pain. _Syringe!_ she thought, terrified, thrashed, didn’t unseat whoever it was. Panic rose in her throat. Mikeala’s words. _Not playing pattycake with the Decepticons anymore. You’d have to aim to find a tree there._

She wasn’t going to die here. She struggled, landed a lucky blow. Heard the curse, male, no accent, kicked again in the same direction, still panting. Another lurch and screech, and someone’s voice demanding backup. 

Her head swam. She felt sick. She was going to throw up if they kept doing that, and kicking was much harder than it had been a few moments ago. 

Gunfire. And then another voice, one she did recognize. 

_“Don’t worry about the NBEs. Just bring the girl.”_

The world faded away. 

 


	14. Chapter 14

Optimus stared up into the sky, the enormity of his failure clogging his vents. His hands clenched. 

He’d tried.

He just hadn’t been good enough, fast enough. Too long without proper fuel. Too long without Ratchet’s assured maintenance. 

Whatever the reasons, he’d failed.

_I will ensure no harm comes to you. Not while I still function._

He’d failed _already._

He should have been able to catch them, to stop them. He hadn’t. 

He worried at the edges of his fingers. Once, he would have had enough spark to rage, to fall to his knees with the grief, but now all he could manage was silence, staring, a pain too great for expression clutching his spark. He had not in all his years frozen like this, but now, the loss of one small human, one small human on top of everything else, was too much.

His Autobots grouped around him, equally silent, hunched in alt. 

Why that one human? He didn’t know. Just now, he only knew that Tessa Marie Yeager had been what he’d set to protect—and he’d failed.

One more failure. Just one small thing, lost in a moment of inattention. 

It shook him to the spark.

He thought he could at least keep one small human safe. He’d been wrong.

Had everything else been such folly? All he’d sacrificed? All he’d been determined to set right? Every agonizing decision…there were so many. Just now, it was hard not to see them as one, long, contiguous failure, incredible in proportion. The failure that had damned his species, that silenced and at last broke Cybertron, the failure culminating in the dust of a remote desert. 

Bumblebee moved forward, rippling brief sympathy through his field, concern. Optimus turned away from him; he deserved nothing of the sort. 

Crosshairs and Drift lurked on the edges of the camp, sullenly silent. 

Hound’s field was unreadable.

He should think about what to do next. How to get his Autobots to safety. Rescue Ratchet. Rescue Tessa.

And for a long, terrible time, he could not. He was too afraid. Terribly, sickeningly afraid. He didn’t know if he could. Chicago, Africa, then this. Was there something wrong in his processor? Could he not decide wisely? Had every good decision he’d made been a fluke?

He’d seen this uncertainty in younger commanders, talked them through it. Had felt it before. Knew it to be a normal stage in their development.

But he was too old for this now.

His plating shivered.

There was no one to turn to.

And they were waiting for him.

He looked at them again, a small group shivering in the lee of a mountain, tucked in and among trees. Every surviving Cybertronian, save Lockdown and Ratchet. 

He’d brought them to this.

He shoved the thought aside. He had no more luxury of self-recrimination or hesitance. Every moment he delayed was another with Tessa resigned to an uncertain fate, Ratchet to a certainly hideous one. He had to act; inaction was worse than anything else. 

“Bumblebee,” he said. “You are in command.”

Bumblebee warbled surprise and pulled himself up out of alt, turning his helm to the side. 

“You will take the team to these coordinates.” He transmitted them, to Bumblebee and Bumblebee alone. “There, you will meet with Director Mearing and her people. You will report what has transpired. Then you will wait for my signal.”

“Signal… _for what_?” said Bumblebee, borrowed human voices accurate to the pulse of confusion that passed through his field. 

“To storm Lockdown’s vessel,” said Optimus. He shifted himself back into vehicle mode, slow and deliberate. “I will be counting on you.”

Bumblebee saluted, an endearing mannerism picked up from the humans. Optimus allowed himself a moment of pleasure, seeing it, no more, and slowly rolled out of the clearing. 

 

* * *

 

If anyone had told him he’d be screaming at a giant robot, Cade would have told them to have a little more faith in his common sense.

Not anymore. 

“He did _what?!_ ”

The robot, bright yellow, hadn’t caught his name, looked uncertain, then spoke, a garble of radio clips. “Am sorry… the girl…taken…He _will_ save her.”

“I don’t give a shit about what he will or will not do!” spat Cade. “We’re saving her, right the fuck now, and if you or any of you assholes want to argue with me—!”

“Calm down,” said Mearing. “Optimus probably stands the best chance of any of us…”

“I will not calm down,” snapped Cade. “That’s my baby girl out there.”

“I know,” said Mearing, and if there had been any hint of condescension or _I told you so_ in the way she said it, courtesy be damned, Cade would have decked her. There wasn’t. “Optimus is looking out for her. That’s the best we can do right now. I’m sorry. We don’t want to undermine his plan; he hasn’t told us anything, so we can’t tell how to intervene without making things worse.”

“Arrogant bastard,” muttered Cade. 

“You’re tellin’ _me?”_ said one of the other robots, the painfully green one. “Absolutely in agreement with you, pal.”

“Hey, Crosshairs,” said another, who was only moderately green. “Have a little respect, huh?”

“Arrogant bastard he may be, but there isn’t a lot we can do right now,” said Mearing. “The best we can do is make sure we’re prepared in case we hear back from him.”

She walked away. Cade glared daggers at her back. 

“Hey,” said a voice by his elbow, and Lennox was there, arms folded.

“What do you want?”

“Look, I get it. I have a kid too.” Lennox gave him a crooked not-quite-smile. “She’s about Tessa’s age, and I’d go apeshit if she vanished. But there’s no one I’d trust more than Optimus to get her back. He’s not going to abandon his own. Believe me, I know.”

_Oh, easy for you to say,_ thought Cade. _She’s not your kid!_ But instead he looked away and said nothing.

Lennox clapped him on the arm. “Hang in there. We’ll get her back.”

 

* * *

 

Tessa was feeling increasingly sympathetic toward every bad guy in every cop show she’d watched _ever._  

For one thing, this chair was a new kind of uncomfortable. For another, it was fucking cold. 

For a third, she was so bored she was trying to remember how to conjugate irregular Spanish verbs. Since she’d flunked Spanish twice, that said a lot. 

The door popped open and Attinger strode into the room. She sat up straighter on automatic and glared at him. 

He said nothing.

She intensified the glare.

He sat down across from her and made a show of shuffling papers. 

Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. “So?” she demanded. 

"You're a very worrying case," said Attinger. Tessa tried not to roll her eyes. 

“Our files indicate that you applied in mechanical engineering,” he continued. "Your teachers and peers say that you are a loner, and highly intelligent. That's not a profile we like to see. That's a profile that causes trouble. We've also found that you’re very interested in space and space exploration. Not a popular topic these days. Mechanical engineering, and an interest in space. There was some discussion over whether you were human–we've dealt with Deception plants before. But apparently, that's not something we need to worry about." The smile was like a shark’s. "So now, we have a new question. How long have you been working for them?”

“What do you mean?" asked Tessa. Her palms were sweating. "I'm not working for anyone.”

“Oh really?" he said. “We know you didn't get that scholarship. That was a lot of money sitting in your barn to just pass up. It could've sent you to any college of your choice. And yet you didn't do the right thing and turn Optimus Prime in. That takes a lot of dedication. The type of dedication we’d expect to see from someone with a vested interest in the Transformers, not an idealistic high school student. So how long have you been working for them?”

"Did they tell you about the cats?” said Tessa. She forced herself to meet his eyes. It was like looking at one of those creepy baby dolls, the sort that blinked when you tilted them, the unnervingly realistic blank gaze that managed to be inimical for all the round fleshiness of the face surrounding it.

“What about your cats?” 

“If you really asked around, you know why we have so many. It's because I can't stand taking them to the shelter. The only shelter in the county is a kill shelter, and they'd probably be put down. So Mrs. McCurdy down the street feeds them, and we take care of the other things. It's better than them dying in a cage.”

“It’s one hell of a big cat," he said.

“He was alone and scared and hurt," she said. "I wasn't about to turn the cats in. I'm not about to turn him in.”

“Well he's not alone anymore," he said. "Now he's got friends. Lots of them. And we've got a problem, a big one, and it's all thanks to you and your soft spot for shelter cats. Do you see why the United States government might be somewhat upset with you? You're looking at the rest of your life behind bars, girlie.”

Tessa didn't have anything to say to that. The entire scene had taken on a surreal edge, and his threat, while it should've scared her, didn't seem immediate. 

"There's two girls who could leave this room today. One is a bright young upstanding citizen with a beautiful future ahead of her. The other will neither be upstanding nor have much of a future. Your choice.”

“Even if I wanted to be your idea of an upstanding citizen," she said, "I have no idea what they are doing, or where they are. So I'm screwed either way. And you threatened to shoot my dad. I don't see a whole lot of reasons to talk.”

He put her cell phone down on the table in front of her. "We don't need information, Miss Yeager," he said. "We just need you to make a call. I'm sure your shelter cat misses you a lot. He’d probably cross the country to find you. I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a happy reunion.”

She looked at the cell phone then him. "You are a class A dick,” she said, before she could stop herself. "You know that right?”

“Call me whatever names you like, Miss Yeager,” he said. “Perhaps you were willing to sacrifice your own future for your shelter cat, but what about your dear daddy’s future?”

“You leave my dad out of this.” She was amazed her voice didn’t shake. “He had nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, my dear Miss Yeager.” His grin got bigger, and he leaned forward. “You’re mistaking me for someone who cares.”

 


	15. Chapter 15

Tessa stared at the phone, then at Attinger. 

“We can pretend this never happened,” he said, smiling. “Your daddy can go back to his life. You can go back to yours.” 

Tessa folded her arms.

“Did you even tell him?” That smile was still there. It made her want to punch him. “What, exactly, was in your barn? I bet you didn’t. You would have thought you were keeping him safe.”

She looked away. 

“He didn’t ask for this, Miss Yeager. You? You made an honest mistake. He just got caught up in it. Is it really fair to send him to prison over that?”

She hated it but he had a point. Dad hadn’t asked for any of this. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t his fault. 

But it also wasn’t Optimus’s fault.

Right?

“You’ve already chosen Optimus over him once,” said Attinger. “Can you really do it again?”

“You don’t know where he is,” snapped Tessa.

“Are you going to bet his life on that?” Attinger pulled his phone out of his pocket, messed with it for a few seconds. “Here. Take a look.”

Tessa leaned forward and drew in a sharp breath, pressing her knuckles to her mouth. Because yeah, that was Dad, probably in a campground somewhere, arguing with Mearing. 

“We can see him,” said Attinger. “And in this marvelous modern age, if we can see him, we can kill him.”

Tessa looked up at him in horror. He only smiled. “So, Miss Yeager. Your choice. One phone call and you and your daddy go free, or you choose the robots again and save on the funeral expenses—there certainly won’t be enough left to justify a coffin.” 

Tessa started to shake. After a moment, she reached for her phone. “Fine,” she whispered. 

She didn’t need to see the condescending smirk, she could hear it just fine in his voice. “Good girl.”

 

* * *

 

The moment the call came through, Optimus pulled to the side with a hard huff of relief. He’d been worried about giving her his comm frequency, a different number than that he’d given Mearing all those years ago, but knowing how to set it up made the second time easier. 

_“Optimus?”_ she asked, and had he been in root mode he would have smiled. 

“Have no fear, Tessa Yeager,” he said. “I am on my way.”

There was a pause, too long. Then her voice again. _“Be careful?”_

His spark warmed within him at her bravery. “I shall.”

_“No, really, they might—,”_ a pause, a pause he didn’t like the sound of. _“Be careful.”_

The call ended, abrupt. 

He sat where he was, every circuit singing with alarm. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t like her. She must have been pressured into that. But how? And why?

After a moment, he flung himself back onto the freeway, driving as fast away as he could. Perhaps it was a way to track him. They shouldn’t have been able to do that, but he didn’t know what the current technologies were, if it was possible. He had to assume anything was. 

But at the same time they tracked him, he might track them. 

He knew where she was now. And if any harm had come to her, the humans would pay. 

He ran through the plan again. Now, with a solid location, it was vastly simplified. Now, all he had to do was arrive. If it all went wrong, only he would pay the price. He could live with that. 

He already lived with worse. 

 

* * *

 

Tessa put the phone down slowly. Attinger took it from her as soon as it touched the table. “Very wise, Miss Yeager. I think that will do quite nicely. Now, we’ll need to hold onto you for a little while. For security purposes, of course. As soon as he’s in custody, you’ll be free to go back to your life. I’ll even have Agent Savoy book you a flight home. First class and all, how about that?”

She wanted to puke. She folded her arms in front of her and put her head down on them, gulped hard. 

“Your daddy too,” said Attinger. She could hear the smirk in his voice. “I’ll send someone to escort you to a more comfortable room in the meantime.”

Tessa closed her eyes. She managed to hold the tears back until the door closed behind him. 

 

* * *

 

The location was well away from any densely settled area, deep in the Nevada desert. He was very glad about that. He had no wish to incur civilian casualties.

But those humans who might threaten and intimidate one of their own children, particularly one like Tessa—they, he had little compunction about. 

He had come to this realization late, far later than he should have. Humans were as much predators as his own species, and they not only preyed on their own, but on their own young—anything weak enough they could overcome. He had despaired of the cruelty of his own species, still did, but the horrors humans wrought, had used him to create, those had their own peculiar horror. It was all the worse for his previous fondness, as if a beloved pet turbofox had turned and fatally savaged a sparkling. 

Five miles out, and he dropped his shielding, both from energon detectors and that of his own transponder, flung his commsuite wide open and broadcast to every Cybertronian frequency he could. 

“Lockdown. I am here; come and get me.”

 


	16. Chapter 16

“Hey,” said a voice at the door, and Tessa didn’t bother to look up. 

They’d given her a room that looked like it belonged in a hotel, bathroom, stupidly squishy bed and all. There was even food, probably lunch. She’d lost track of how many meals she’d missed.

She ate mechanically, then sat on the end of the bed and stared at the wall. After a few minutes, she lost the battle with the tears and sat there with them running down her face. At least they’d provided tissues. 

The door shut. “Do you prefer window or aisle seats?” 

Now she did look up. The goon who’d held the gun to her head stood in the doorway, looking incredibly awkward. She didn’t feel like making this any easier on him. She glared. “Does it matter?”

He shrugged. “Thought I’d try asking.”

She looked away. “Fuck off.”

“Hey. Kid.” He put the tablet he held down on the TV stand. “I get it. It’s hard. But you did the right thing.”

“Not because I wanted to!”

“I know,” he said. “And yeah, loyalty is important. And I know, you did everything you could to help someone you thought was your friend. _I_ thought they were our friends too, once.” He squatted on the floor to bring his head to her level. Tessa glared, totally unimpressed with the friendly overture. “I was in NEST,” he said. “I worked with them. Before Chicago.”

“And you changed your mind.”

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice went hard. “I changed your mind. My sister died in Chicago. You know what happened? Optimus Prime decided to make a demonstration of how much we needed him, and _left us to the Decepticons._ ” 

_That’s not true,_ thought Tessa, didn’t say it. Optimus would never do that. But she didn’t like the look on the man’s face. 

“He wanted to make the point that we needed them. So he let them have the city.” He looked at her. “He may have played nice with you, Miss Yeager, but he isn’t. Just remember that.”

She said nothing. 

“Now, window or aisle?”

Tessa shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“All right, then.” He did something on the tablet. “If you’re so sure. Just so you know, you did the right thing.”

She didn’t dare to say anything to that, looked away instead, waiting for him to leave. 

The building shuddered. The goon looked up, alarmed. “Stay here, okay?”

_Like I have a choice._ Tessa stayed, watched the door close behind him and went to the curtains at one end of the room. She pulled them aside, to find that the window looked out on a corridor. She sighed. “Figures,” she said aloud, and then had to cling to the thick fabric to stay upright.

It had to be Optimus. 

And they were going to catch him, and it was all her fault.

Anger bubbled to the surface. She started looking around. Unfortunately, when designing the room, the no-doubt-powerful-and-mysterious government agency holding her prisoner had completely neglected to include anything that could be jury-rigged into a weapon. 

“Fuck,” she said out loud. There was toilet paper and blankets. What the fuck could she do with those? She certainly didn’t want to sit around and _wait_ like some princess in a tower. Could she take apart the bed?

She was deeply involved in this line of inquiry when someone took the roof off. She yelped and ducked falling ceiling tiles, looked out from under the bed when things seemed to settle down enough. 

“Tessa Marie Yeager,” said Optimus above her, and a hand was put down in front of her, “quickly. I fear the diversion I created will soon cease being distracted by your captors, and resume his original pursuit.”

Tessa scrambled onto the hand. “What?”

She clung to his thumb as he straightened up quickly and broke into a lumbering run that was really quite horrible. Tessa hung on and focused on not falling. After a few moments he closed his hand around her, which made death by falling a bit less likely, but the motion sickness was just as bad.She pressed her forehead against the plating of his thumb, and tried to focus on not barfing. 

He flung himself down behind something. Tessa did scream as the ground dropped out from under her and lurched sideways, thinking for a moment that he had been hurt, that she was definitely dead—

He opened his hand and looked down at her, optics worried over the battlemask. “Are you all right? Did they harm you?”

“No,” she said, wondering if she’d ever be able to let go of his thumb. She was shaking, too, couldn’t seem to stop. “I’m fine. But they knew you were coming, the call was Attinger’s idea, I’m sorry, they threatened to kill Dad.”

“I thought as much,” said Optimus. “Do not worry, Tessa. You did the right thing. Your father is not as well defended as I am.” 

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, but Attinger’s going to know—“

“As the human saying goes, I believe he has bigger problems at the moment.”

Underscoring his point, the ground bounced. 

“What was that?” 

“Lockdown,” said Optimus. “I told him I was here.”

“ _What._ ”

“It was the best of many bad options, Tessa.”

“Um. Yeah, thought Lockdown _was_ the bad option! What are we going to do when he finds you, chuck rocks at him? You’re kind of alone!”

“Not for long. My Autobots are coming. It will be all right, Tessa. Lockdown will occupy the humans, and by revealing our location, we bring him to us. We will need his ship.”

“And how do you plan to get aboard that ship?”

He looked down at her. There was a certain guilty air to his expression. “I fear you will not find this part particularly acceptable, Tessa Marie Yeager. It requires me to allow myself to be captured.”

Tessa stared at him.

“You promised to trust me,” he said. “Today, I need you to make good on that promise.”

Tessa opened her mouth.

Then she closed it again, thinking better of what she had to say. “Okay,” she managed after a breath. “Fine. What’s my part?”

“Alert the Autobots to my position. Have you still your cellular phone?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they figured it didn’t matter.”

He looked up, searching the horizon. “They are not here. Tessa, I am loathe to take you into danger, but I do not think you would long remain safe here. The last thing I want is to leave you again at the mercy of Attinger and his colleagues. If I cannot leave you in their protection, I must, it seems, take you with me.”

“Can’t we just hide until they arrive?” Her voice sounded squeaky and shaky to her own ears, and she flushed hot. She didn’t want to sound scared, but to be absolutely honest, it sounded like a really, really bad plan. 

“I doubt—,” Optimus started, but something fell out of the sky onto them. Tessa bit back a shriek, clinging as Optimus pulled her in tight to his chest. 

She stayed like that, panting, two breaths, three, opened her eyes again. Peered through Optimus’s fingers at the outside world. 

A net. They were in a net, and Optimus was staying very still. She could hear his ventilations, he sounded okay, but his stillness was that of a trapped, frightened animal. 

If it weren’t for her, she realized, he might well be able to fling off the net and escape. But one-handed, with a human to protect, it was impossible. 

_Part of the plan_ , she reminded herself. _It’s part of his plan. He’s got to know what he’s doing._

Footsteps, coming closer, heavy, Cybertronian footsteps. Tessa curled tight in the protection of Optimus’s hand, and wished she could at least see what was going on. 

The footsteps paused.

“Well,” said a voice, and it was somehow not what Tessa had expected, less savage, quieter. “You have come to your senses, Optimus Prime. Or at least, you appear to have come to your senses. Forgive me if I am not inclined to trust you.”

“Lockdown,” said Optimus.

“Do not resist,” said Lockdown. “It will go hard with you if you do.”

A pause. It took all of Tessa’s will to stay in place. She wanted to run. She couldn’t stand the silence. It was somehow worse than anything else could be.

“I shall not,” said Optimus at last. 


	17. Chapter 17

Lockdown simply dragged them to the ship, not binding Optimus further than an ugly pair of cuffs over his wrists, not searching him further. Perhaps he didn’t think he needed to. Perhaps his security measures were different than human ones. Tessa could hear the heavy thump of many feet, and strange rough ventilations to either side of them. Not Optimus’s. Optimus hardly vented at all. Optimus’s hand remained still, but she could feel a fine tremor in his plating. 

Something to the side of them made a strange, screeching yelp. Metal clanged close by and Optimus vented sharply. Lockdown said something, alien, a short rattle of command. There was a quick shuffle, a whine like a slipping fanbelt. Then nothing but the movement of feet. 

Tessa curled herself up very small, goosebumps rippling over her arms despite the heat of the day. Optimus was scared. Obviously scared. She shut her eyes. Forced them open again.

_This won’t work_ , she thought, quite clearly. She didn’t want to think about Lockdown’s reaction when he found her. Or the phone. _Has he even realized this won’t work?_ A long delay as something whined ahead of them, and she tried to work out what it was. Maybe a ship’s ramp? She didn’t know what a Cybertronian ship looked like. 

Metal rang underfoot. 

_If this won’t work,_ she thought at last, _what do I do now?_

The next thought was so ridiculous she nearly laughed. _Fix it myself?_

Then she considered it. There weren’t a lot of other options. She had not the slightest clue how she might go about fixing it herself, but it made her feel better. 

_Fix it myself it is, then._ She took a shaky breath. _First, get out of the net and independent of Optimus._

The air smelled weird. Musty and metal, oil, something rank and animal she couldn’t place. It was chilly, dank, and Optimus’s hand over her felt very warm. She shivered. _Second, call the others._

Strange noises. Hoots, wails, something that sounded uncannily human. Optimus took a short, sharp breath. His hand flinched around her. She swallowed hard.

_Third…take a look around? I don’t know if I can find my way around a ship, or repair it, but I_ should _be able to break stuff, right?_

She uncurled. The dragging had stopped.

That couldn’t be good.

 

* * *

 

Optimus had witnessed plenty of horrors in his function. Megatron had seen to that. 

The contents of Lockdown’s ship were something entirely different. Jazz had understated the matter considerably. The prevalent stench of spilled oil and energon was enough; the organic smells were worse. It was little more than a flying charnel house. He did not wish to know how much of it was at Lockdown’s behest, and how much the requests of his clients. 

Lockdown hadn’t seen Tessa yet. That much was a mercy.

Fear roughened his ventilations. This was a great risk. He did not know if he should have taken it; his judgement seemed gone in these things. He wished he could step down, talk to Ratchet, Jazz, _someone_ to know whether it was truly gone, or if he was only deeply afraid, a spark-deep grinding fear that seemed as much a part of him as his own soul. But there was no one to take his place. No one to talk to. He was alone with his fear now.

He sometimes wondered if he had allowed the humans to capture him, not to save his team, but because dying was so much the kinder option. Mearing had shown him that.

But now, there was the human child. Dying, stranding her—it was not an option. He had to make this work. 

Lockdown set him down in the center of a room where the reek was somewhat less. He looked around as best he could, found nothing of use. The walls were shrouded in darkness.

Within his hand, Tessa stirred. 

_No, little one, do not—_ He did not dare close his hand more tightly for fear of harming her, but the insistent patting of a small hand made it very clear she had her own ideas of where she needed to be. He didn’t want her wandering about the ship. She could be hurt. 

Lockdown turned and looked at him. His spark contracted, instinctive fear. Lockdown gave him a long, considering look, as if he were a piece of scrap, a modification to be installed, and turned away again.

If Lockdown found her on him…

He let his hand open a little more. She wriggled free and scrambled down his side, with a touch on his plating before she left, the slow double pat humans used to comfort frightened juveniles or animals. 

Then she was gone, too small for her feet to even make a sound on the decking as she went. 

Optimus turned his attention back to Lockdown. 

“Why?”

“Why?” said Lockdown, and came across the room. Metal gleamed in his hands. He stood over Optimus a long moment, gave him that assessing look again. “Do you believe I owe you an explanation?”

“It would be welcome.”

“Hm.” Lockdown turned his helm slowly to one side. 

Optimus didn’t even see him shift his weight before the pede slammed into his midsection, driving the air out of his vents, making him gag as the purge-poor Earth fuel surged up his intake. The second blow caught him in the back of the helm. His visual feeds cut out, his gyros destabilized, lurching nausea swept through him and he did purge. Lockdown seized his bound wrists and hooked them to something. Restraints stabbed into the joints of his pedes, wringing a protesting yelp from his vocalizer. 

He lay there, panting, watching the errors scroll over his visual feeds, and then cried out again as pressure was put on the pede restraints. Lockdown hoisted him aloft, helm down, the prickle of torn plating an agony, the pull a greater one. 

He hung, tried to master himself. Shook, heard the chains rattle. Helpless. He was utterly helpless. He forced the senseless terror down, tried to orient himself.

Lockdown had stretched him between ceiling and floor, upside down, with enough tension in the restraints to keep him from moving at all. He could not pull his arms into his body, nor bend his knees—he could do nothing to defend himself, or even curl away from whatever Lockdown might please to do with him. Transforming was out of the question. 

His gyros didn’t much like the position. They kept trying to equilibrate, sending his vision skittering. 

“Precautions are necessary,” said Lockdown. “I anticipated greater difficulty.”

“Why?” he asked again. “Why did you do this? The war is over, Lockdown. We are a dead species. Why am I worth so much?”

And Lockdown smiled. “Salvation.”


	18. Chapter 18

Tessa had both fists crammed against her mouth to keep from screaming. She knew damn well it’d attract Lockdown’s attention; that was the appeal. One scream, he’d turn his attention away from Optimus and to her and she could lead him a merry chase. Then, at least, he’d stop hurting Optimus. 

Problem was, she didn’t exactly have much faith in her ability to lead Lockdown a merry chase for more than, oh, about five minutes. In which case, _everyone_ was screwed. 

So she crammed both fists against her mouth and sweated. 

“Salvation?” Optimus sounded exhausted. Miserable. Utterly bewildered. “Salvation died with Cybertron.”

“Never fear,” said Lockdown. “You will have ample opportunity to atone for your mistakes, Optimus Prime. The Creators have decreed so.”

“Who are these creators?” If Lockdown could pronounce capital letters, Optimus was just as effective at pronouncing them lowercase. 

“The ones who made us. The ones we turned from, all those eons ago. The ones we in our folly drove from Cybertron.”

“ _Primus_ made us.” Tessa had never heard that tone in Optimus’s voice before. “The Quintessons sought to enslave us with lies and petty baubles.”

“Primus was a legend, a fallacy, created to mislead us from our true path by jealous fools.”

“I carry the Matrix of Leadership, Lockdown,” said Optimus. “I carry the memory of our people, a direct conduit to Primus. He is more than a legend. I know this.”

“You know this.” Mocking. “And how would you know this. When was the last time you heard Him in your spark, Prime?”

Silence.

“How long has it been? Millenia? Since you and Megatron abandoned our home? If ever you heard more than the echoes of your own fears. No, Optimus, there was no god that walked with you. I know this, I have been shown the truth.”

“Fifteen years.”

“Since what?”

“Since I last heard Him.”

“And what did He say?”

“Nothing.” Silence. Optimus let out a long vent. “I felt Him die.”

The quiet thickened, the two of them looking at each other. Tessa tucked herself more firmly behind the large piece of equipment—spiky, nasty, she didn’t want to know what it was—and slid a hand down to her cell phone. _I hope I can get reception._

“So there is nothing left,” said Lockdown. “Not even for you, faithful as you are. You have killed your god, Optimus Prime. Where then do you go? What then do you do? I found you cowering amongst humans. Are the Quintessons—our creators?—worse than the extinction of your species? Are you so reluctant to surrender your power over them that you would let them die instead? You are the closest thing they have to God, now. Primus is dead. Long live the Prime. Is that what you want, Optimus?”

Silence again. Tessa paused, a finger above the call button. Lockdown might hear it ring. Then, “I have nothing to say to you.”

A terrific crash, Optimus cried out in pain. Tessa hit the button as Lockdown’s voice rose in anger. “You will take responsibility, Prime. You will take responsibility before our creators, before our species.”

_Shoulda texted them_. But she wasn’t sure of how well they’d be able to track her from just the text. 

She couldn’t say anything, but the rage in Lockdown’s voice, Optimus’s rising in defiance, should make it clear enough. She hoped. She clung to the phone and waited. 

What seemed like three seconds later, something on Lockdown beeped. Tessa clung to the phone and stayed very still. 

“What is it?”

Pause. 

“Emanating from here? Very well.”

Tessa gave the phone a brief look of regret. It was a good phone. Who knew when they’d be able to get a replacement. But she liked her skin in one piece, thanks. She lifted it and got ready to throw.

“Care to tell me what device you’ve smuggled aboard my ship, Prime?”

“I do not.”

“The creators would like you alive. There are many ways of keeping you that way while sufficiently punishing you for your defiance.” Another blow, another grunt of pain. 

_That is ENOUGH_ , thought Tessa, and hurled the phone as far from her as she could and got ready to run. 

Lockdown stopped talking. She imagined him squinting suspiciously around the room. 

What if he didn’t leave the room? What if he stayed here and looked for her? She felt suddenly very obvious, wished she hadn’t decided to wear the white T-shirt what seemed like ages ago. Good for driving and hot sun, not good for hiding in the bowels of alien ships. She’d stand out like a sore thumb. 

And the door whisked open. 

She almost sprinted for it, realized Lockdown’s attention would be on it, and restrained herself. 

“What is it?” snapped Lockdown.

“Autobots,” said the newcomer, a flat, synthesized voice. Some kind of non-sentient being? Tessa hoped so. She inched away from her hiding place. “They are following.”

“And you disturbed me just for this?”

“They are heavily armed.”

Lockdown made a huff of exasperation. “We scanned you for tracking devices, Prime. Have you been clever enough to create something truly new in the interim?”

“If I had, I would not tell you.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. Fortunately, we will not need verbal confirmation when we have all the tools we need to find it for ourselves.”

Tessa’s stomach lurched. But Lockdown’s attention was distracted, and whatever-it-was still stood in the doorway. She ran for it.

The thing wasn’t one of the revolting cyberhounds Optimus had told her about, simply a hominoid shape with a flat green oval for a face. It was looking at Lockdown for instructions, didn’t notice as Tessa darted past it into the corridor. 

She ran, the flat-out haring scramble that had made one of the track coaches despairingly remark that she could be a real asset if her elbows going everywhere didn’t make her a real menace. But style didn’t count in running for your life.

_Optimus, hold on._ Now all she had to do was find things to break. 

 

* * *

 

 

Finding things to break turned out to be harder than anticipated, largely because she was far too small to reach any of it, and even if she could have, grabbing the cables and swinging from them probably wouldn’t have dislodged them either. Add to that the fact that Attinger had taken her pocketknife, and there really wasn’t anything she could do.

_Fuck._ She sat down in an alcove and buried her face in her hands. Hopefully the Autobots would get there soon, because she didn’t want to think about what was happening to Optimus, and it didn’t look like she was going to be of any use at all to him. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

And the thing in the cell she was leaning against growled.

She looked up. 

A—she would guess—Cybertronian face peered down at her. Metal, at least, and there was something in the piecemeal construction of the face that seemed like Optimus, and the eyes glowed. Only these were red, not blue, and they looked very, very angry. 

Another growl. This time it sounded more like words. Cybertronian? She’d never heard Optimus speak it.

The being in the cell seemed exasperated with her inability to understand, and raised a hand, tracing a symbol on it with a finger.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “No Cybertronian.” But she was looking at the keypad.

This was an old ship.

The keys were worn. 

Someone hadn’t changed their combination for a while.

If she got the sequence wrong, she’d probably trip an alarm. If it happened with multiple cells, it might call Lockdown out. Which would get him away from Optimus. Which would let them rescue Optimus.

Tessa grinned. And wouldn’t you know it, there was just enough of a pedestal to allow her to shimmy up to the keypad.

She punched in a sequence of the keys, not much caring whether she got it right or not. That wasn’t the point.

So she was entirely taken aback when the cell’s forcefield went down, and its occupant shambled out, turned into a giant T-Rex, and took off down the corridor. 

“Um,” said Tessa, too stunned to really question what she’d just seen. “Well. That’ll do.”

She went in search of more. 


	19. Chapter 19

“While it is unlikely that your compatriots will be capable of finding us in time, whatever the transmitter you’re using, I will find it.” Lockdown smiled. “To prevent further desperate measures.”

“I transmitted nothing,” said Optimus, feeling very tired. Lockdown’s words still stung, more so because of his guilty conscience. Salvation? Lockdown knew little of what had transpired in his absence, if he thought he might offer salvation. 

“How else would they have found us?” said Lockdown. 

Optimus shook his helm. “I do not know. But I have transmitted nothing.”

“So Earth has taught you how to lie.” Lockdown crossed the room and picked up a tool. “This shall be unpleasant for you. If you see the sense in cooperation, I will stop.”

Optimus watched him, silent. He did not look forward to what was to come, but it would keep Tessa safe. Every moment she had to get off this ship before the engines finished their start up sequence mattered. Every moment she had to save herself…

And if his Autobots could get aboard, even if they failed, even if Lockdown triumphed, they would be free of Earth. They would be safe. 

He watched Lockdown, and waited. 

Lockdown turned back to him, several pieces of medical equipment in his hands. Optimus recognized them, had seen Ratchet use them—plating pullers, probes. Things used to dig shrapnel from wounds. 

He braced himself. Even so, he cringed at Lockdown’s touch, tried to get away. It had no effect. The restraints were too good. 

Lockdown started with the guards on his pedes. Optimus fought to keep himself still, not to make a sound. His plating twitched in reaction. He’d known pain, the pain that destroyed a mech’s dignity, that ripped screams from the most controlled vocalizer—this was mild in comparison, but frightening in its own way, slow, methodical.

He grit his dentae and tried to bear it. 

He dreaded to think of Lockdown getting to the larger plates, the plates over his thighs, his spark—

He flinched as Lockdown jammed a probe deep between plating, white-hot sharp pain. Lockdown noticed that, and chuckled. The probe withdrew, and Lockdown stroked an admiring hand along his leg. 

“I have looked forward to this,” he said, very quiet. “What a fine piece of engineering you are. Our creators did indeed shape you with such care. No wonder they want you back.”

Optimus glared at him, calling to the surface memories on sparklinghood, of curling warm and safe against a larger frame. He did not remember his carrier’s name. His destiny had come for him too early for that. But he did remember the play of other sparkling-fields over his own, and the one encompassing them all. 

A memory like that could not be created. 

“You almost match him in quality,” said Lockdown, prying painfully at another plate. “But all your weapons, your heavy armor, hasty modifications. They spoil your lines. You were not meant for them, and it shows.”

Optimus hissed as that plate, too, was removed, and Lockdown dug beneath it, searching. 

“He, however, was built for war. His weapons are as much a work of art as you were meant to be.”

“Megatron,” he said, after a time, and it was a shock how bitter the name tasted. _I did right_ , he reminded himself. _He could not be allowed to survive, to continue his depredations on Earth._

“Yes.” Lockdown paused in his work. “Do not fear. They requested you as undamaged as I could manage. Your plating will be replaced.” He looked at a strip of red and blue and made a face. “Though with something less garish.”

“When…When did you see Megatron?” It seemed suddenly important. 

Ice settled in his tank at the response.

“They requested both of you.”

 

* * *

 

One T-Rex, one triceratops, and one pterodactyl with which the designer had taken _considerable_ historical liberties (seriously, she was pretty sure real pterodactyls hadn’t _had two heads, dear fucking GOD,_ Cybertron!) and a few assorted wobbly things later, Tessa sat down to catch her breath. The dinos were definitely doing better. There was crashing and screaming well down the corridor. The wobbly things mostly just wandered around and looked confused. They were, at least, better than the _thing_ with the _tongue_ that had tried to get fresh with her. She’d left that in its cage, and only with the greatest of restraint had kept herself from ripping said tongue off.

It had definitely been an exciting day. 

She needed to keep making it exciting. She hadn’t liked the way Lockdown looked at Optimus at all. There was something ugly and predatory in it, and it sickened her to think of leaving him there. But she had a job to do. She couldn’t help him if Lockdown caught her. Quite the opposite. 

Her mood was definitely shifting to a blow-shit-up kind of mood. Not that she had particular experience with a blow-shit-up kind of mood, at least not one she could take action on, but right now…

_Armory_ , she thought, and plopped back to the floor and started down the corridor. _There’s got to be one around here somewhere._

Lockdown had the same passcode almost everywhere. It hadn’t been changed for a while. Which rather startled Tessa, because he was supposed to be a badass bounty hunter. Wouldn’t a badass bounty hunter _think_ of these things? Was this just the low security wing? Or was it simply so rare a prisoner got out of the cages that the basic security of different passcodes wasn’t needed? Or were the drones really fucking stupid?

Or was she walking into a trap?

She hoped he was just stupid. 

She scuttled through the corridors, which grew steadily darker and noisome as she went. At one point, she passed the body of something Cybertronian. Smaller mechanical drones clustered over it, pulling its limbs this way and that as they tugged at its plating. She watched for a few moments, disgusted and unable to look away, then took to her heels when one of the drones looked up with a single green optic and chirped alarm. 

She tried the passcode at the next door she came to, confident in the series of beeps, glad of the summer months of climbing trees.

She was used to it working.

So she nearly fell off the pedestal when the alarms went off.

 

* * *

 

 

Mearing was smirking. He knew it. 

Not outwardly. She’d never reveal that much, not voluntarily. But he could hear it in her voice, and that made him wish he had the leeway to put a bullet through her head. 

“Well, Harold, how does it feel to be officially a moron?”

“I don’t have to take that kind of shit from you,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He probably couldn’t convince people that she’d really defected. If he could, he would have shot her already. 

He surveyed the wreckage of what had once been a state of the art facility. There wasn’t much left. The Cybertronian ship had left it very, very flat. Parts of the remains were on fire. He supposed it was simple good fortune that the rest of the robots had gone after the ship, rather than hanging around. 

“A teenage girl and her stray pet robot did this. That’s pretty embarrassing.”

“The girl isn’t the problem.” Damn the bitch, she knew it, she had to know damn well that the Yeager girl was a scared kid, but Mearing never let petty things like reality get in the way when it came to jibes. He gritted his teeth. 

“Isn’t she? This isn’t Sam Whitwicky anymore, Harold. She’s got some training as a mechanic. She’s scary smart—you said yourself she fits a lot of worrying profiles. She’s used to everything being hard, everything being out to get her. And she’s still got these interesting moral ideas. She didn’t turn Optimus in, not even when it ruined her chances of a good future.” Mearing chuckled. “And as for Optimus, did you not read my, oh, seven years of data on his personality and behavior? Harold, I don’t say this lightly: you’re a fucking moron.”

“She’s certainly smart,” said Attinger, grudgingly. “But she’s an idealist, and she’s a _kid_. If I have to choose a threat to planetary security from a lineup that contains both Optimus Prime and that kid, Tessa Yeager is not going to be the name on the warrant.”

“Ah, yes. You have grandchildren, after all. How _is_ little Shiloh?”

Attinger ground his teeth again. “Miss Yeager was supposed to lure Optimus here.”

“Well, she certainly did. For some funny reason, he must have thought it was a trap. Can’t imagine why.”

“We were not expecting _an entire ship._ ”

“Seven years of data, Harold.” Mearing shrugged. “It should have warned you. Optimus is an idealist as well—or fancies himself one, at the least—but he’s not completely stupid. Remember he’s been fighting a war for the last few million years.” 

Attinger snorted.

“I’m just damned glad you weren’t around when Megatron was active. The planet would be toast three times over by now.” Mearing did smile, absolutely humorless, and held out her wrists. “After this, they’re either all going to be gone, or we’re going to have a serious problem on our hands. Now, how about we stop pretending that you’ve captured me so I can go participate in my half of the mission?”


	20. Chapter 20

“Almost there,” said Lennox, as if he meant to be comforting, and Cade hung on to Bumblebee’s steering wheel and gritted his teeth. 

“We’ll find your daughter, Mr. Yeager.” Cade glanced sidelong at Lennox, wondering if he’d meant that to be comforting. It certainly wasn’t comforting _enough_. “She made the phone call. That means she was free less than twenty minutes ago.”

A lot could happen in twenty minutes. Cade turned his eyes back toward the corridor ahead of them, trying not to breathe. Bumblebee had put his air on recycle some time ago, but the stench still crept in. 

And Bumblebee made a small high pitched noise of distress and screeched to a halt. Behind them, something roared, huge footsteps getting closer. 

Cade resisted—just barely—the urge to slap the Camero’s wheel. “What the fuck! Drive, do you want it to catch up to us?”

Beep. Beep. _Blaaaat_. 

“That means shut up and stay where you are,” said Lennox, unnecessarily. That _blat_ had sounded remarkably like a raspberry. 

The footsteps got closer still, shaking the floor, and Cade shrank down in his seat. A sidelong glanced showed him Lennox doing the same, which gratified him somewhat.

Whatever it was was right on top of them. Cade glanced up, got an impression of feet, glowing eyes, a long waving tail, as whatever-it-was quite literally went overhead, totally uninterested, and as he straightened up, Cade got a good look at it.

“ _What the fuck,”_ he gasped. “That—that’s a fucking robot dinosaur. That walked over us! Was that one of ours? This seems like the sort of weird shit you guys are used to, right?”

Bumblebee made another rude noise. Lennox said, “No.”

“Robot dinosaur,” said Cade. “What’s that doing out? Why didn’t it try to kill us? It’s got to be a guard, right?”

“It ignored us,” said Lennox. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that wasn’t a guard. Mr. Yeager, I have a feeling your daughter’s more all right than either of us guessed.”

Cade looked after the dinosaur and the trail of destruction it had left and slowly shook his head. It did kind of seem like Tessa’s style. But he wasn’t taking chances. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

Bumblebee rolled forward again.

 

* * *

 

Tessa had been gone for less than half an hour before another of the drones came in search of Lockdown. “One of the prisoners has escaped,” it said. 

“No matter,” said Lockdown. “The energy dampers will take care of it.” He turned back to Optimus. 

Optimus shied from him, what plating he had left held so flat to his body that it trembled. Not that it slowed Lockdown.

Within minutes the drone was back. “One of the prisoners has escaped.”

“Another?” said Lockdown. He moved away from Optimus, a plate in his hands, and the look he gave Optimus was suspicious indeed. 

The drone’s faceplate flickered. “One of the prisoners has escaped.”

“I seem to have been wrong,” said Lockdown slowly. “You did not bring a transmitter, but something far more insidious. Perhaps one of those humans you love so.”

“One of the prisoners has escaped.” 

“That’s four now. Does your human realize that the energy dampers will freeze any mechanical life form that cross them in place?”

Optimus did not look at him. 

“One of the prisoners has escaped.”

Was that a flicker of concern on Lockdown’s face?

“Energy dampers are far worse than simple confinement,” Lockdown said. “You had best hope none of those prisoners were yours. And your human will not survive this adventure.”

Optimus bared his dentae. “I will kill you if you hurt her.”

Somewhere, alarms went off. 

“Her,” said Lockdown. “Interesting.” He put down his tools and turned away. “I expect I will return soon.”

The doors slammed shut behind him, leaving Optimus in darkness.

 

* * *

 

“ _Fuuuuck_ ,” hissed Tessa. She scrabbled down off the pedestal and bolted down a corridor. It didn’t much seem like a proper run, because the corridors were too damn big. It took too long to get anywhere.

Far behind her, but not nearly far enough, something yowled. 

She didn’t waste her breath on swearing. She just ran. 

She could feel their jaws on the back of her calves, a prickle as if teeth had already closed on muscle and bone. She could feel her skin cringing from it, hear the heavy thumps of enormous paws, close, close, _too fucking close_. 

She skidded around a corner. No hidey-holes here, nowhere to go they couldn’t follow, just long flat corridors in all directions. Her breath caught in her throat, lungs burning, a stitch in her chest got worse. She’d fall, she was sure of it, and then what? It didn’t bear thinking about. 

Louder thumps, and a huge shape appeared around the corner. 

“Optimus!” she shouted. 

“No,” said the shape, resolved itself into Drift, optics blazing. “Get down, human.”

Tessa obeyed, threw herself down and slid along the decking. Drift went over the top of her and a scream of metal, a snarl and yelp, announced that he’d reached the hounds. 

Tessa pushed herself up and stared at the confusion of shadow, the flash of Drift’s swords. She couldn’t see a lot, just dark shapes lunging at a larger shape. 

She found herself shaking. Stayed where she was, half from good sense, half from the fact she wasn’t sure she could get up if she wanted to. 

A final shriek and Drift straightened up. “There,” he said, and walked over to her. He smelled, something luminescent dripped from a shin-guard. He looked down at her, a long stare from narrowed red optics, then leaned down and picked her up. His hand was far smaller than Optimus’s, and he made no attempt to hold her so she could sit in his palm; he simply wrapped his fingers around her and lifted her like an ice-cream cone. Tessa shuddered, wanting to protest, but something in his expression silenced her.

She stayed still, feeling the seep of something’s fluids through her shirt and jeans. “What’s going on?” she managed after a moment. “Where’s Optimus?”

“Not our concern,” said Drift. “We are looking for Ratchet.”

“Okay,” said Tessa. She stayed still. 

Drift moved surprisingly quietly for such a big creature. Tessa shifted her weight a tiny bit to see if she could wiggle free if she needed to—she could, she _thought_ , but she didn’t want to bet on it—and then tried to settle in to enjoy the ride. 

But this was totally different than being carried by Optimus. For one thing, she _trusted_ Optimus. She definitely didn’t trust Drift, something not helped at all by the way he was carrying her, like an object and not a living being. Optimus didn’t trust him either, which made the current situation really unpleasant. She hoped Ratchet might help, but she knew Ratchet even less than she knew Drift, only that Optimus cared about him a great deal. 

She looked up at him. The red glowing eyes were _definitely_ unsettling. 

And so she was looking at his face when it twisted in pain, and he drew in a short, rough breath, and froze. 

“Drift?” she said, and there was no answer. She looked around. Something on the wall blinked, sickly green. She looked at Drift again. He’d killed all the hounds, but she had no doubt there’d be more. “Drift, we have to keep moving.”

Still no response. Tessa looked at the blinking light again. She had an awful suspicion that they’d just found the reason Lockdown didn’t worry about changing his passcodes.


End file.
